


The Wonderful Part of the Mess That We Made

by PinePrincess



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Abusive and fucked up, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Just covering all the bases, M/M, OFC - Freeform, Past Rape/Non-con, Platonic Kylo and Rey, Post-TLJ, Slow Burn, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, obviously, of an OFC, probably, stressed out droids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-02-22 16:51:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13171134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinePrincess/pseuds/PinePrincess
Summary: After the events of The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren refuses to fully take command. Despite everything, he can't face what he's done. Pressure is mounting on General Hux and he's slowly losing control of his crew and of himself.Meanwhile, something is building between the two of them. One refuses to acknowledge it; the other is steadily and secretly consumed by it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter takes place throughout TFA and TLJ. The next chapter will start off immediately after TLJ.

Kylo expects to lose consciousness, expects to die, maybe hopes to die, but the planet only burns brighter, and the trees grow sharp around him. The girl and the traitor have disappeared. He wants to lie in the snow and watch the sky turn red, but his body acts of its own will. Every moment is an eternity, the world is crystal clear and pulsing. Snoke says something in his mind but he can’t untangle the words.

Hux stands in front of him, more real than the trees, than the air, though Kylo is sure he’s a fantasy, sent to torment him at the very end. But Hux grabs his shoulders and shakes him. Kylo holds onto his arms, feels their weight. He’s real. 

He locks onto Hux’s hair, redder than the inner fires of this planet. Hux shouts something, but time has disappeared and Kylo watches impassively as Hux’s face twists in desperation, fear, anger.

Kylo doesn’t care. He wants to smell Hux’s hair, touch his face, wants their bodies pressed together as this world dies.

 

***

 

Hux deposits Ren in the med bay of the Finalizer before he can sort out the damage they’ve left behind. He knows its not entirely Ren’s fault, but he can’t help but hate him as he replays the last several hours. If Ren had unlocked the girl’s mind, if he hadn’t let her escape, if he’d discovered the explosives instead of engaging in some ridiculous family drama…

“Snoke has called for you, Sir,” Mitaka tells him, eyes averted as always. 

Hux doesn’t thank him. With his jaw clenched, he stops his review of their lost personnel and heads for the audience chamber. 

He takes a moment before opening the doors, as always, to get his thoughts under control. It’s more difficult than usual, his frustration and resentment boil back to the surface the moment he thinks they’re under wraps.

Inside, Snoke’s hologram blinks down at him from its oversized throne.

“Why did you go alone, General?” Snoke says, peering down at him. Hux doesn’t have to ask what he’s referring to. He keeps his eyes downcast.

“You asked me to retrieve Kylo Ren—”

“I did not specify that you should do this without help. I assumed you would have the common sense to not needlessly put yourself and my apprentice in danger by attempting something you alone hardly had the strength for.”

Hux digs his nails into his hands, allowing himself just a moment of self-hatred. As soon as he’d known that Ren was outside the base, he’d run after him, hardly thinking of the consequences. Ren had been delirious with pain, barely able to stay upright as Hux helped him to a transporter. There was a protocol he should have followed, others he could have saved if he’d asked for help in saving Ren. Why had he been so thoughtless?

“My apologies, Supreme Leader,” he says. “Kylo Ren is healing in the medical bay. I will supervise his recovery personally—”

“You will do no such thing, General,” Snoke says, and the hologram leans towards him. “You will stay away from Kylo Ren.”

 

***

 

When Kylo wakes, Hux is asleep in a chair across the room, his data pad still lit, still clutched in his hand.

Snoke, sensing his consciousness, pours himself into Kylo’s mind. Kylo is used to it, this sudden invasion. Once he welcomed it, the chance to not be alone in his own head, but lately Snoke is heavy on his thoughts. He is no longer guiding, he is all-encompassing. Snoke gives no words, just anger, thrown over Kylo like a veil. He takes in everything: Kylo’s wounds, flashes of memories from the base, the General’s presence in the med bay. Snoke dissipates just as quickly, leaving the seed of himself that lives there, deep in Kylo’s mind, hovering, whispering. There are times when Kylo questions the existence of that seed, wonders if his own mind hasn’t simply built it from the little remnants of thought that Snoke leaves behind.

He feels empty in Snoke’s wake. His face burns. His body aches. He sits up on the bed, pulls a needle out of his arm.

The medical droid keeps its distance. They’ve all since learned to stay away from Kylo unless asked otherwise. Sometimes he wonders if the General has programed them this way in an attempt to save personnel. 

Hux stirs in his chair, hair more disheveled than Kylo has ever seen it; a lock has come loose from whatever rigid product he uses and has fallen across one eye. 

Kylo clenching his fists, daring the medical droid to approach him. He wants to tear it apart with his hands, wants to throw the broken pieces out an airlock, wants to know he has successfully destroyed something. Hux doesn’t wake. Kylo hates him, hates that he’s here, hate’s the need in himself. He should be stronger now, after what he’s done, but he’s not. There’s a hole in his chest where the man on the bridge once was. He can’t give him a name, can’t give him a title. He should have been no one, it should have been nothing to kill him. Snoke assured him it would help, that killing the man would cure him of his desires. But now one of his desires sits on the other side of the room, still tormenting him. Hux is slumped low in the chair, legs thrown out at odd angles. It claws at Kylo, this vulnerability. He isn’t sure if he should sit here and let it consume him, or if he should find his lightsaber and end it. Himself or Hux, either would fix the problem.

Hux projects nothing, must be too exhausted for dreams, and Kylo can’t summon the focus to go probing into his mind. He’s never done that to Hux before, as much as he’s wanted to. Something akin to fear has kept him at bay. He’s not sure he wants to know what is deep in the General’s thoughts.

He wishes Hux would wake up, would leave, would yell at him, would do anything other than sit there. The droid, mistaking Kylo’s stillness for calmness, wanders too close and loses an arm. It shrieks and pedals away. The arm crashes into a stack of instruments and bacta pads and imbeds itself in the wall. Hux startles awake, his hands tight around his datapad, his face blank with sleep.

“What are you doing here?” Kylo voice is clipped, dangerous. He hardly realizes he’s crossed the room until he’s standing in front of Hux, watching him blink up at him. It takes him a moment to take in the situation. His eyes go wide momentarily at the sight of Kylo’s heavily bandaged chest.

“I—The Supreme Leader ordered me to monitor your healing progress,” he says, his voice going cool as he falls out of his twitchy, half-sleep. He’s lying. Though his face is smug and blank as ever, he projects guilt, embarrassment at being caught disobeying.

Hux plants his feet on the ground and looks up at Kylo as though he can’t be bothered to rise to look him in the eye, to acknowledge Kylo’s anger.

“You wanted to see me like this,” Kylo says, and Hux blinks. “You wanted to see me in failure.”

He Force-pushes Hux’s chair into the wall, and heads for the med bay doors, not caring that he’s in pain, not caring that he’s shirtless and covered in bandages.

“Ren!” Hux shouts and marches after him. Kylo ignores him.

“You’re not fully healed, you ridiculous child, you can’t just go—”

Kylo whirls around and lifts Hux off the floor with the Force.

“Stop me, then,” he says. 

He pulls Hux closer to him, keeping him hovering above the floor. He’s not hurting him, but Hux stays silent and seethes. He’s fighting against the Force hold, trying to move his arms, legs, anything. He’s got a knife on him, somewhere. Kylo can always sense its presence, laughs privately at Hux’s projected feeling of protection. Hux projects a fantasy now as he hangs in mid-air, so loudly he might as well shout it: he imagines grabbing the knife and reopening Kylo’s wounds, imagines the blood pouring down his face. 

But even through his bloodlust, through his disgusted silence, Hux’s eyes rake over Kylo’s bare chest, linger a moment too long. His eyes shoot back up to Kylo’s. Something snaps between them.

Hux is thrown backwards as Kylo pulls the Force away, letting go of him. Kylo turns away, ignoring Hux’s projections—fury, confusion, disgust—and leaves the med bay. But even as he stalks through the the corridors, he can feel Hux’s mind as though they’re standing next to one another. He can’t shut him out.

 

***

 

When Ren returns, he is different. 

Hux meets him in the hanger, as is protocol for the commanding officer. He expects to be utterly ignored, and if he’s honest with himself, he looks forward to it. Ren’s immaturity offers him the chance for righteous indignation, for the moral high ground.

Instead, Ren disembarks his ship and nods to him.

“General,” he says, his voice robotic through his ridiculous helmet.

“Lord Ren,” Hux replies, automatically. He has the distinct impression that the man who has returned is not Kylo Ren at all, but Snoke wearing his skin.

 

The facade falls away slowly. Hux tries his best to ignore Ren, but he can tell, he can sense his slow return of self. Snoke can too. 

They chase the remains of the resistance fleet through hyperspace, and the Supreme Leader councils the both of them. Later, officers bring Hux the smoldering remains of Ren’s mask they found in a lift. He throws it in the trash compactor. He had always hated the thing; it gave Ren an advantage over him, hiding his face. Without it he was so very human, childish, emotional, the opposite of the disfigured warrior Hux had initially assumed him to be.

After the initial attack on the resistance, Ren all but disappears. Thanisson finds Hux as he walks across the bridge to tell him that Ren has been spotted talking to himself in a corridor. 

“I thought you would want to know, General,” Thanisson says.

Hux is too distracted by the slow battle before them to ask why in hell he would want more confirmation that their leader’s pet is losing his mind, so instead he thanks Thanisson and tells him to return to his post. Walking away, Thanisson shoots Colonel Datoo a look that Hux can’t interpret. He puts it out of his mind.

 

***

 

The moment Snoke dies silence falls over Kylo, silence he hasn’t felt since he was a child. Snoke is gone, truly gone, from his mind, and his own thoughts rush to fill the empty spaces. He is whole again.

Snoke lied to him. It wasn’t the deaths of Han, Rey, Hux that could heal him and give him power, it was Snoke’s. He’d been whispering for so long Kylo had almost forgotten he was there, but now, in this new silence, Kylo feels his power waken. He is immense. He is invincible.

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

Ren kneels in the dusty cave, his back to the door.

“The last of the Resistance has escaped,” Hux says. He knows his voice is shaking with rage. He can’t hide it. “How should we proceed?” 

They wouldn’t have escaped if the First Order’s forces had advanced immediately instead of letting Ren play laser swords with a fucking ghost. Hux seethes with this knowledge, too angry to turn off his scathing internal monologue. He knows Ren can hear it, knows he must be broadcasting his fury, but Ren does nothing, doesn’t even get up off of the ground. His head is bowed and Hux wonders for a moment if he’s engaged in some kind of idiotic Force ritual.

“Ren,” he says, his voice sharp. It echoes through the cave. 

He refuses to call him Supreme Leader, not after being thrown around the control room. He doesn’t care now if Ren hurts him, hopes that Ren turns around, hopes he’ll have something to crash his anger into. But when Ren does turn around, his face is blank. He holds an empty hand up, palm out, as though cupping water.

“Should we attempt to follow the remaining Resistance fighters? They left in only one ship, if we can catch up to them—”

“No.” Ren closes his hand in a fist and stalks towards the doorway. 

Hux, refusing to move, is pushed aside with the Force. Ren can’t even use his hands to push him away, just the Force, as though he’s a fucking door. Hux wants fists, he wants blood, even if it’s his own.

“Ready the transports,” Ren says. “We go back to the Finalizer.”

Hux follows him, back through the cave, back out onto the salt flats.

“There are still supplies and crew aboard the Supremacy that need recovery, if we’re not going after the Resistance ship, we should be—”

“Later, Hux.” Ren’s voice is quiet, almost dreamlike, as though he can’t fathom why Hux is suggesting these things. 

Hux hands shake as they board the transport. He barks orders to his commanders when Ren stays silent. Has Ren forgotten the title he stole? Forgotten their dire position, sitting out in the open, the remains of their fleet burning in the sky? He looks like he’s been turned off, his eyes out of focus, his breathing strangely calm. 

They are alone at the helm of their transporter, the rest of the crew in the cockpit and in the holding bays. Kylo stands behind Hux as they watch the landscape diminish and that damned cave disappear.

Hux stands straight, stays still even when Ren moves so close that he can feel the heat of him inches from his back. He wants to whirl around and ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, wants to grab a handful of his hair and make him bleed, wants to open that stupid lightsaber against his chest for what he’s cost the First Order. For what he’s cost Hux. 

Hux had a plan. A plan that was now crushed and cooling on the throne room floor with Snoke’s severed body. He hadn’t for a second believed Ren’s story of how the Supreme Leader had died. And now his idiocy, his recklessness, had led them to this. The moment he entered the throne room Hux should have…

Ren takes a step forward, pressing himself against Hux’s back, his breath on Hux’s neck. Hux refuses to jump away from him, refuses to lose at whatever this is. A hand wraps around his throat, just barely applying pressure.

“You’re right,” Ren says in his ear. “You should have been quicker with the blaster.”

Ren’s grip isn’t tight enough to scare him.

“Next time, I will be,” Hux says, just loud enough for him to hear.

Ren’s breath is slow, deliberate as they both wait to see what he will do. If Hux wasn’t so furious it might be soothing, ocean waves an inch from his ear, the calm before the storm. He expects to feel Ren’s hand tighten around his throat, expects pain. Instead, Ren turns his head slightly and buries that ridiculous nose of his in Hux’s hair, keeps breathing. Hux’s blood seems to stop in his veins. He swallows, feeling Ren’s fingers against his throat, wishing they would dig into him, hit him, hurt him, anything but this.

After a moment they tighten, but not in malice. Hux has the sudden impression that if he were to step away from this, Kylo Ren would simply collapse.

Ren’s breath is soft, controlled, breathing him in. Meanwhile, Hux’s heartbeat has run away from him. He knows that Ren can feel it. He swallows again and his face burns with the renewed realization that Ren’s body is pressed against him, he can feel Ren’s chest expand, can feel his legs lean forward slightly, can feel Ren’s belt buckle against his spine, can’t help but imagine the sound that belt would make if it came undone, can’t help but imagine Ren’s other arm reaching around and running down his chest, slipping beneath his uniform—

He should push Ren away, but he can’t. He can’t move, he can’t think, he can’t lose this horrible little game that Ren has started.

“General—?”

Ren steps away from him smoothly. He takes all of Hux’s air with him.

They’ve reached the Finalizer and Mitaka stands in the entrance way, his signature piteous look now tinged with curiosity and, strangely, fear. Hux turns away from Ren and stalks out of the helm, giving Mitaka a scathing look. The last thing they need, he needs, is for the crew to think they’re— 

He can’t quite finish the thought.

Intent on putting as much distance between Ren and himself as possible, Hux marches away through the hanger. He feels Ren’s eyes on his back.

 

***

 

The hundredth time his data pad pings, Kylo throws it across the room. It hits the wall and shatters, the crash echoing in his head.

Then the door comm starts, a few pings per hour. There is nothing much he can do about that, apart from grabbing his lightsaber and killing everyone on board. He’d keep a few droids around to dump the bodies out an airlock, then he’d let the ship run out of fuel, float alone inside it for as long as it took to run out of oxygen or get caught in a celestial orbit. The thought is appealing, though admittedly counterproductive. 

_Counterproductive to what?_

There is a small voice in Kylo’s head that wont shut up. It has been growing since he locked himself in his rooms. He can feel it growing, rooting deeper and deeper. He rather hopes its some ghost of Snoke come back to haunt him, but he fears that its simply his own doubts rising to inhabit the place in his mind once filled by Snoke.

_Snoke is gone, your objective is gone—_

But there is still work to be done, still a galaxy to unite. He has lost sight of that, he knows. But locked in his room on the Finalizer, the rest of the galaxy seems so far away, so insignificant. What difference would it make to let them keep fighting their pointless civil wars, let them destroy their planets, leave them alone. There was a time he thought he could save them all, save each species and planet from their petty squabbles and mortal stupidity. He could unite the galaxy in strength, in _his_ strength. For that, he would be feared and remembered.

But he’s failed. The others are holding onto hope, each ping at the door tells him that, but it is pointless. Another battle, another war, another leader. 

_Where is it all leading?_

Hux’s hope is the loudest. Even in this room Kylo can’t turn off Hux’s projections: scrappy determination and burning, righteous anger. He’s been to Kylo’s door six times. Each time Hux’s projections of anger just barely disguise his confusion and embarrassment. He doesn’t want Kylo to open to door, doesn’t want to have to look at his face after what happened on the transporter. Kylo is all too happy to oblige, to stay locked in here forever, to punish himself for everything he has ruined, for his moment of weakness. 

His hands are bruised and bloody from punching the walls. Each time the pain recedes he hits the bulkhead again. Two of his fingers are likely broken. Dried blood crusts on his clothes. 

It’s eating him up, his rage, guilt, hatred for everything in the galaxy, and he has nowhere to put it. He never did, not really, but before he was on a path to something, he had a guide. He hits the wall again, feels another knuckle pop out of place. He killed his master for what? A scavenger girl. She is nothing, she—

_She is everything. She is better than you._

For the millionth time, he sees Luke’s lightsaber fly through Snoke’s torso, sees the look of utter shock on his face. He did the right thing. Who cares if that old monster is dead. Who cares if Kylo breaks each bone in his body one at a time. He’ll replace them with metal and chrome, he’ll rebuild himself until there are no bones left to break, no skin left to bleed, until his fury has been quieted.

He hasn’t eaten in forty-eight hours, but he doesn’t need food, he doesn’t need anything. He will transcend his physical body, become one with the Force, become better than human. Snoke taught him to turn to meditation for each and every problem, told him this is how he would overcome his weaknesses, told him—

_Stop thinking about Snoke._

Kylo hovers a few inches off the floor and sends his mind out beyond the ship, beyond the system, not knowing what he’s looking for. 

Suddenly, the hum of ventilation system cuts out completely. Kylo hears another set of breath join his own. When he opens his eyes, Rey has her back to him. She is rigid. She knows he is there, but she doesn’t want to acknowledge him.

He doesn’t want to see her either. He doesn’t want to think about what happened after Snoke’s death in the throne room, about his proposition, about her answer.

“Your master is dead,” she says to the wall. “Why is this still happening to us?”

“There is a pathway between every being. Snoke just opened the door between us.” When Rey hears his voice, soft and hoarse, she turns around. Her eyes go wide at his appearance, his sunken eyes, his bloody hands and clothes.

“What’s happened to you?” she asks before she can stop herself.

Kylo just looks at her, not caring to answer that question. He watches the conflict play across her face: the desire to press, to ask, to protect, and her hatred and disappointment, her desire to hurt him.

“So we’re stuck like this?” She says at last.

“Looks like it.”

She scowls at the look on his face, which she surely perceives as apathy.

“I’m not talking to you,” she says.

He nods.

“Fair enough.”

She glares at him, wanting a fight. He won’t give her one. He’s barely there anyway.

She spends the rest of their time together looking for ways out. She tries walking away, but just seems to move in place. In her eyes Kylo must be floating along beside her, wherever she is, impossible to erase. He smiles at this, likes the idea of haunting her.

Rey pinches herself, growing frustrated, and finally sits and attempts to mediate, though her mind is far too agitated to concentrate properly. She sits with her back to him, but otherwise it could be real, the two of them meditating together. After all, the location hardly matters. With this door between them open, their minds can meet even with him on the Finalizer and her on whatever shit hole planet the Resistance is surely holed up on. Perhaps if he can see into her mind he can find them.

But as soon as he reaches out, Rey is gone.

The ventilator hum returns. 

 

***

 

Like the overgrown child he is, Ren is refusing to come out of his room. He isn’t answering his comm, or his door, or taking food. 

It’s not like Hux particularly needs him, but word of Snoke’s death and Ren’s self-promotion to Supreme Leader had spread quickly, and now his absence has been noted and questioned by every level of command. Colonel Datoo in particular seems to revel in throwing it in Hux’s face, asking for the Supreme Leader’s approval on every little thing that Hux orders. It grates at him, for he knows how hated Ren is among the First order officers. Surely if it was Ren on the bridge, Ren ordering dangerous recovery missions to the Supremacy, Ren truly in command, it would be he who was questioned. Hux longs to throw the lot of them—the whisperers, the whiners, the ones asking pointed questions about his authority—out an airlock, but they can’t afford to lose more personnel. And with Phasma gone, with Ren throwing his tantrum, Hux hardly has the muscle to enact his preferred punishments, even if they could spare the casualties.

“We need to go after the resistance while they are weak,” Datoo says. Four of them sit around a conference table. The many empty chairs speak louder than the Colonel. 

“We do not have the forces to continue our attack,” Hux says. “We’ve underestimated the resistance at every turn, we can’t afford to drain our resources locating and fighting them while control of the rest of the galaxy slips away from us.”

Just that morning, high priority citizens and arms dealers on Canto Bight were demanding more protective units after the disaster with the resistance fighters, units that the First Order can not spare. Their grip on the galaxy, even on their own forces, has loosened.

“So we allow them to build up their forces again, while we run with our tail between our legs?” Lhun leans forward on her arms, staring Hux down. Hux bristles. He suddenly wishes Phasma were still here.

“We’re not running anywhere, Colonel, it is not strategic to attack before we are fully prepared, the consequences could devastate our fleet and our primary goals,” he says. He glances at Borona, expecting her to back him up, but she says nothing.

“Do you not think it more advantageous to hear the Supreme Leader’s insight?” Datoo says.

“My orders on this matter come from the Supreme Leader himself. We are not to pursue the resistance fighters,” Hux says. It might as well be true. As much as he’d disagreed with it at the time, it was just about the only information he’d gotten from Ren before he’d locked himself away. The time for keeping up their attack on the resistance has passed, they have more pressing matters to attend to.

“Sir,” Borona follows Hux after their meeting. 

Nothing had been accomplished besides setting his teeth on edge. Datoo has lost all regard for authority, and seems to be taking Lhun with him.

“Colonel,” Hux says, turning back to Borona.

“Sir, Datoo and Lhun do not trust Lord Ren.” She lowers her voice as they walk. “They believe the circumstances surrounding the Supreme Leader’s death were…suspicious.” 

Hux wants to roll his eyes at this observation.

“Datoo seems to have no problem invoking Ren’s new title each time he wants to question my authority,” he says.

“Do you trust him, General?”

“Datoo?” He says, affronted she would dare ask such a leading question to a superior officer.

“Lord Ren,” she says.

For a moment he is lost for words. Borona is watching him and insanely, his face goes red. _Of course I don’t trust him,_ he wants to say, _how could I?_ But he can’t afford to sew more seeds of suspicion and distrust on this ship.

“Yes I do,” he says, though it tugs on his pride. “As should we all.” 

They need stick together, even if for now ‘they’ includes Kylo Ren.

 

That night in his rooms, Hux is unable to sleep. He’s never required much to begin with, but lately every time he lays his head down it’s something new: Starkiller Base imploding under his feet, or being sucked out into space to suffocate, or falling, just falling and falling endlessly.

Tonight it is Ren’s hands around his neck. At first they’re real, flesh and blood, barely touching him. Ren is behind him, arms wrapped around him, body pressed against him, it’s that day on the transporter. But in the dream Hux sighs and closes his eyes, leans back towards Ren only to discover that Ren is gone. The hands around his neck are invisible, just cold air pressing against him. They tighten until he can’t breath. His air is shut off completely. His panic spikes and he wakes gasping, sits up in bed.

His eyes dart around the dark room, his face hot with embarrassment. No Ren, not even the ghost of Ren. He’s alone.

His heart skips in his chest and for a horrible moment his father’s words ring in his ears— _weak, thin as a slip of paper and just as useless._

Head in his hands, Hux forces the words out of his mind and breathes slowly. As always, when he thinks of his father, the old scar on his abdomen burns. He resists the memory that swells up in response.

_Get out_. _Get out._

He’s never sure who he’s talking to, his father, the memory, or his younger self, but the words always seem to help.

He tosses in bed, sweat darkening the sheets as he thinks of Ren, Snoke, Datoo, until he gives up. He grabs the bottle of rum kept with his personal things and sips at it, reading memos and requisition forms, reveling in the familiar burn until at last, head spinning, he falls asleep at his desk.

 

***

 

Kylo dreams of heat and sand. The wind whips constantly across rolling hills, and the sky is a tepid blue. He wanders, not knowing who he is, not knowing where he is, kicking up sand to watch it blow away.

The dream changes. The land settles, he comes back to himself. He recognizes the feeling; He’s had dreams like this before. It takes him a moment but he knows where he is: Jakku. For a moment he’s back, his mask still intact, his sword in hand—they have to find the droid, the pilot sent it somewhere, they have to find Skywalker—

But the cloud over his mind fades. He looks down at his empty hands, feels his unmasked face. It’s long over.

There is someone there though. Kylo turns to face a fallen AT-AT, half buried in sand. He can feel her in there, wonders what the dream will do if they refuse to meet. She must feel him too. 

He sits down in the sand, lets it run through his fingers, looks up at the sky. He doesn’t care that the Force is connecting them; they don’t have to cooperate.

As soon as he thinks it, Rey appears from behind a tarp over the AT-AT’s destroyed underside.

She stares at him and sighs, resigned.

“You’re in my dreams, now,” she says. She’s wearing the horrible scavenger clothes she was wearing when he first captured her on Takodana.

“It’s my dream too,” he says.

She leans against the walker’s leg.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he says, “I told you, I’m not making this happen.”

She looks up at the sky. Even through the dream, Kylo feels her anger and bitterness towards him. It’s hotter than the sand around them, shimmering around her like a mirage.

“This doesn’t feel like a dream. What’s going on?”

He considers not answering her, but the words are already out of his mouth before he has control of them.

“It’s the Force,” he says. “The more you meditate the more it will happen. It’s usually a memory or a vision, I’ve never been connected with anyone like this before.”

She nods slowly, taking this in.

“I’m not much good at meditation,” she says.

The wind pushes the tarp flap open to reveal the a jumble of tools, a makeshift table, a hammock. Kylo looks back at Rey, at her sun-faded clothing and the familiar way she leans against the walker.

“Was this your home?”

She looks around, thinks about not answering him.

“This isn’t just your vision,” she says. “It’s my memory.”

For a moment, silence stretches between them, then Rey turns her back on him and disappears behind the tarp. Kylo stands up and follows her.

The AT-AT belongs in a junkyard, the inside stripped of anything useful, the metal wearing thin against the winds and the sand. He tries to look at it through her eyes, tries to see the little foundations of home. Trinkets, plates, clothing, bits of chalk line the walls. A rag doll sits on a shelf near the hammock, dressed in orange as a rebel fighter pilot.

Rey sits with her back to him, a pile of tools and twisted metal at a makeshift table in front of her. Her anger is a current running just below the surface of her mind. His own emotions feel offline, as though he’s only there to witness hers.

“What happened in this memory?” Kylo says as she works on unbending a thin piece of metal, clothe wrapped around her hands for protection.

“You’re already invading my mind, must you invade my home as well?” she says, but turns around in her seat to look at him. “Nothing happened here. This day was the same as all the rest.”

On a wall behind the table are lines of white notches, scraped into the metal. There are thousands of them, far too many to count.

“Why didn’t you just leave?” he says.

He feels her sudden burst of rage before the piece of bent metal bounces off his shoulder. She glares at him, already on her feet.

“I know you don’t care about your parents, but I did. I _do._ Even if they were nothing, as you said. I waited for them for fourteen years, I lived here alone my entire life.” Her hands are shaking. Her voice is shaking. She’s embarrassed by this display of emotion, but not enough to try to stop it. “You had parents who loved you, your father was brilliant, and you killed him—”

Kylo opens his mouth but she throws another piece of metal at him. He deflects it easily.

“No! I don’t care what you said, I don’t care if you didn’t hate him. If you killed him, you didn’t love him, and you didn’t care that he loved you.”

“You don’t understand—” Kylo growls, anger awakening in his chest, but Rey rushes forward and shoves him. She’s strong, but he is barely thrown off balance. He tenses, ready to lunge after her, but the look on her face stops him. 

“Why didn’t _you_ leave?” she hisses at him. “Snoke was dead, the guards were dead, why didn’t you come with me, why did you have to go and ruin everything?”

She considers punching him, and he considers letting her, but she stops herself before she can raise her fist. She closes her eyes for a moment, willing herself not to cry, then turns away from him.

“Get out,” she says. “I told you before, I don’t want to talk to you.”

“You think I want this either?” Kylo says, voice rising. “Our minds are stuck like this, the Force has us trapped together, I probably can’t even leave if I try—”

“Fine!” She shouts, slamming a tool down on the table as she sits down again. “Sit in the corner then and shut up until this is over.”

He stands, nostrils flaring. He itches to destroy the walker, burn down the entire memory, send those bits of twisted metal flying into her skin one by one— 

_Lair. You don’t want to hurt her. You never have._

He digs his nails into his palm, tries to rid himself of that voice and the shining little place it comes from inside his head. His nails don’t hurt, don’t bite. He can’t feel pain in the dream. For the first time he notices his hands: clean, unbroken, unbloodied. 

Rey sits hunched over the table, movements jerky, awareness of his presence pinging off her in frustrated waves. He doesn’t want to obey her, but he senses that her nerves will calm if he’s a smaller target, if his body is not so overwhelming in her space. He sits, feeling like a child.

There is so much sand in the walker that the floor is cushioned. Next to him, his blurry reflection looks out from a dull sheet of scrap metal leaning against the tube opening to the cockpit. He’s wearing the black tunic he wore that day in the throne room. Maybe its been there the whole time, or maybe it just appeared, he can’t be sure. Now that he’s aware of it he can feel his sweat from the fight, can smell Snoke’s burning flesh on the fabric. He wants to put his head on his arms, but instead forces himself to turn toward the shapeless mass that is his face.

_Hux should have shot you._

He can still feel Hux’s throat in his hand, choking him from across the room as Hux projected waves of hatred and betrayal. Even as he’d sworn allegiance his mind was whirling with thoughts of mutiny. Maybe Kylo should have kept squeezing, should have ended it there. Kylo clenches his fists again, wishing his nails could draw blood.

“There was no space in my head for thoughts of leaving,” Kylo says, before he even really understands what this means.

In her effort to ignore him, Rey knocks a piece of scrap metal off the table and it lands with a thud in the sand. She sighs, hanging her head, and puts her tools down.

“You said you were here for fourteen years?” Kylo says, still facing the sheet of metal. “I think Snoke had been in my head since I was born. There was always something there, something whispering and humming, I didn’t even understand it was him until I was old enough to hate my parents for dumping me on Luke. To hate Luke for fearing me. Then Snoke seemed like a friend, like part of my mind. The only one who understood how I felt.”

Rey turns around in her seat.

“He was—”

“I know what he was,” Kylo snaps. “But he was always there. Might as well have been a part of me. And when I killed him it was like all the lights in a house going out, even the tiny ones, the ones that keep it warm and livable. I had never been…empty before. And in the silence, after we killed the guards, I realized the hum in my head was never coming back, he was gone, and I’d never felt farther from…” _From yourself._ “…From Ben Solo.”

He turns back to Rey. Her face is tense.

“You wanted me to leave with you, to return to the resistance and to Leia Organa and act like Ben again, but Ben Solo was finally gone the moment that Snoke died. Snoke’s throne sat there open and I thought about everything I’d done for him and how pointless it had all been. Who cares who he was, who cares who I was. Light and Dark, it doesn’t matter. With your help I could be better than Ben, better than Snoke, better than Kylo.”

He wants to say more, a lot more, but he’s run out of words. Rey just blinks at him. She projects nothing. For some reason, she’s trying to hide her feelings. She opens her mouth and takes a short breath.

The dream dissipates around Kylo. Rey’s eyes go wide as she disappears.

“No, wait—” he says, but he’s already opening his eyes, sitting up in bed, grasping at the last tendrils of the dream. 

 

***


	3. Chapter 3

Hux holds the comm down with his thumb, determined to stand there until Ren opens the damned door. What could he possibly be doing in there? He’s destroyed their leadership so he can sit in his rooms and feel sorry for himself, and Hux will no longer tolerate it. Although he’s dreamt of it since Ren’s arrival, Ren’s current absence from the bridge has become a problem too big to ignore. The sidelong looks Hux has caught from Datoo and those under his influence have evolved into full blown whispers. And as Hux knows all too well, whispers lead to plans.

He wanted to bite Borona’s head off that morning when she commented on the red around his eyes and asked if he was feeling quite well. She’s been cool towards him since their hushed conversation in the corridor, refusing to entirely meet his eyes. He wishes he could punish her for this, but in reality no rules have been broken. That’s the trouble with all of it—nothing is overt, nothing is _wrong_ per-se, but ever since Crait he’s felt like he’s back at the academy, surrounded by those older and stronger than him, the hairs on the back of his neck raised at all times. Perhaps he’s being paranoid. Perhaps it’s all in his head.

Hux can’t hear the ping of the door comm through the sound proof walls, but he imagines the constant ring of it boring into Ren’s mind, forcing his hand. He hopes it’s driving him insane, hopes he flies out of the door like a hurricane, because Ren’s pointless anger is easier to deal with than the suspicion and anxiety that is eating Hux alive. He doesn’t care if Ren hurts him. It’s a secret point of pride, his ability to take a beating. It was a necessary skill to cultivate, growing up with Brendol Hux Sr.

Just as Hux starts to worry that Ren is somehow ignoring the comm and this pointless pursuit will be witnessed by some gossiping officer, the door slides open.

“About bloody time.” Hux storms past Ren and into the room. He doesn’t want to go into Ren’s quarters, but he’s feeling uncomfortable and too exposed to yell in the corridor where anyone could be listening. “What in hell have you been—”

Hux looks around the room, blinking. The furniture is all but destroyed. The desk is in pieces, the walls are scratched and smeared with what looks like dried blood. A shiver runs up Hux’s spine. The room looks like it’s housed a wild animal, trapped and biting itself to try to wriggle free of its confines. He sees a glimpse of the dark bedroom through an open doorway, but averts his eyes as though he might see something disturbing, some hidden corner of Ren’s life he’d rather keep a mystery. He doesn’t want to turn around either, doesn’t want to see what’s become of Ren himself. Perhaps he’s simply given into whatever powers of insanity usually control him and gone completely feral. 

But the presence of Ren’s eyes on the back of Hux’s neck make him turn around. Ren stands, bloody and bruised, with his hand still on the comm pad. The door slides closed and Hux wonders if he should panic at being shut in with this creature. Ren’s eyes are just slightly out of focus as he stares in Hux’s direction, as though he’s half in a trance. 

“Why are you here?” he says, his voice frightfully quiet.

Hux isn’t quire sure how to respond when neither of them are yelling.

“You’re needed on the bridge,” he says, and clasps his gloved hands in front of him, desperate for some sense of propriety as they stand alone together in the mess of Ren’s front room, Ren slouches against the comm panel, his undershirt stained with blood. Right now he doesn’t look like Kylo Ren, doesn’t look like a First Order officer or a Sith Lord.

“Why?” Ren says, crossing his arms, and Hux tries hard not to breathe fire.

“Because, _Supreme Leader,_ the crew requests your leadership.”

The words hang in the air between them. Hux waits for some kind of response, but it’s like Ren hasn’t even heard him. Ren gazes past his head like he’s watching a holofilm on the back wall and Hux’s jaw clenches. He would prefer a feral Ren to this dazed, preoccupied emptiness. Hux looks around the room, then regards Ren cooly.

“Or—” he says before he can stop himself, “are you too busy destroying First Order property to lead the army that you stole?”

Ren’s eyes snap to his face, hard and bright. Hux feels his pulse jump as Ren stands up straight.

“Actually I’ve been meditating,” he says, not as angrily as Hux had been hoping. “I’ve been trying to locate the remains of the resistance, _General_.”

Hux swallows. If that’s true and Ren wants to go after them, after everything Hux has been through trying to keep them on track with their colonization of the new systems, with the Canto Bite debacle and the multiple planets in revolt…with Datoo and Lhun…

Hux’s face is carefully blank, but Ren tilts his head slightly and looks at him as though he’s just said something interesting. He takes a step forward and Hux has to force himself to stand his ground.

“You don’t want me to do that,” Ren says, his voice still low, almost a whisper. Hux bristles, tries to keep his composure.

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I want—”

“No, just now, when I said that, you were worried. You don’t want me to find them. Why is that?”

He takes a step closer. Hux tries to keep his mind shut and his worries in check, but he doesn’t know how. He’s never cared much before if Ren could hear his mind. But now…what if Ren thinks he has an alternative agenda, what if he thinks he’s a traitor—

“No, you’re much too selfish to turn traitor, General. The Resistance has nothing you want, it must be something else.”

Hux glowers at Ren and opens his mouth to defend himself before realizing that he has nothing to say. Ren is exactly right.

Hux should not have come here. Should have let him rot.

“Ah,” Ren says. “There it is.” 

His voice is light, almost playful, as though he’s found a missing shoe instead of a piece of Hux’s mind. He takes a step closer and Hux can smell the blood and sweat on him. He wants to look away; Ren’s eyes are too close. They’re making his head spin, but he can’t back down. Ren brings a hand up to Hux’s face, and his heart all but stops at the impending contact. But Ren’s hand just hovers an inch away from his nose, breaking their eye contact. Hux’s eyes close involuntarily. His jaw clenches. 

The warmth of Ren’s hand encloses him, traps him. Insanely, he wants to lean into Ren’s stupid, bloody hand, he wants Ren to touch him. He finds the knife in his pocket and grips the handle.

“It’s not just in your head,” Ren says softly. “You’re right. They’re turning against you, Hux. You can see it all unraveling.”

Hux’s eyes snap open and he slaps Ren’s hand away. How dare he say that like it had been an inevitability, when everything that has happened, everything that is happening, is entirely Ren’s fault? He locked himself in here and left Hux to drown in the mess he made.

He tries to push past him to get to the door comm panel, but Ren catches him by the arm.

“Let me go,” he says, when Ren’s grip tightens. “I’m leaving.”

“That’s not what you wanted to say just now,” Ren says, shaking him slightly, his voice sharpening. “Come on, you’re angry, say it.”

Hux, teeth bared, whips the knife out of his pocket, and presses it against Ren’s side, not even hard enough to cut through his undershirt. For a moment they both look at the knife blade resting against the bloody fabric and Hux curses himself for hesitating. Ren will lose it and throw him across the room or worse. 

But instead Ren’s eyes go wide and he smiles, a sharp, cruel smile. Hux feels his own face burn and twist in disgust. He shoves the knife at Ren with all his strength, not caring about the consequences, not caring if he murders the Supreme Leader. But it is immovable, like he’s trying to press it into solid metal. He glares at Ren, who is much too close now and still smiling his infuriatingly brilliant smile.

“Tell me, honestly,” Hux snarls. “Is there anything I could do to hurt you?”

“Not with that,” Ren says, nodding down at the knife. His grip relaxes slightly on Hux’s arm but Hux can’t move. He won’t be the one to break, the one to back down. He stands tall, eyes steady, trying to ignore his wild heart and the way Ren’s eyes roam over his face.

Ren’s breath smells metallic, like blood. Starvation, Hux realizes, remembering survival training from the academy. Ren hasn’t eaten anything since before he killed Snoke.

“Why did you come here, General,” Ren says, and Hux wonders for a moment what is going on in his head that has led him to this. He pushes these thoughts aside, worried that Ren can sense them.

 _I need your help,_ Hux thinks, unhelpfully, because those words will never leave his lips.

“I told you,” he says. “You’re needed on the bridge.”

“You don’t want me on the bridge. You hate when I’m anywhere near the bridge.”

“Circumstances have changed,” Hux says, he feels his control slipping. His face is burning at Ren’s proximity. “Phasma is gone, half our leadership is gone, and your self-promotion has been heard ‘round the galaxy. So yes, Ren, I’m here to ask you to please do your fucking job.”

Ren drops Hux’s arm and backs away. Only in the sudden absence does Hux feel how close he had been, close enough to feel the warmth of him and see the small complexities of his face. “And if I don’t want to?” Ren says, crossing his arms and gazing around the room. 

“You pestilent child,” Hux says, practically spitting in his anger. “I don’t care what you want. I care about the First Order. I care about the Galaxy.”

“You only care about yourself,” Ren says, sounding tired. “We’re the same, Hux.”

“I’m nothing like you,” he says, cringing internally at how immature this sounds.

Ren smirks as though he heard this. Hux goes red, looks away, curses himself for looking away, curses Ren for causing this. This is what Ren does, Hux realizes. He traps him so that anything Hux thinks is the wrong thing, anything he feels has been filtered through his awareness of Ren. It’s always been this way; Ren has been needling at Hux from the first moment he boarded the Finalizer under Snoke’s orders, always at the back of his mind, always just around the corner. 

Ren leans against his ruined desk and Hux wonders if he should just leave him to starve in peace. He remembers, suddenly, falling asleep in the med-bay while droids stitched up Ren’s still smoking wounds. He face burns again at the memory. The fact that he hadn’t slept or eaten in days hardly excused disobeying a direct order from Snoke. Why had he done that? What had he been thinking?

Without warning, Ren pushes off from the desk and head toward the bedroom doorway.  
“I’ll be on the bridge soon.”

“Wait—” Hux says before he can disappear in to the darkness. The word is out before he can catch it, and his stomach turns with the realization that it wasn’t said because Ren needs any more persuading, but because Hux doesn’t particularly want to leave.

Ren turns in the doorway and regards Hux for a moment.

“General?” He says the word like a taunt. Hux feels particularly exposed, standing in the middle of Ren’s wrecked room, his inadequate knife still held loosely in his hand. He wants to just turn and leave, wishes the sliding door had the ability to slam, but he can’t leave now, not after what he said and not while Ren looks at him like that. So he says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Why did you kill him?”

Through all the fighting and paranoia, the question has been at the edge of his thoughts, not because he can’t think of a reason, but because he can think of too many.

Ren’s face betrays too much. It hadn’t been a calculated decision, it was stupid and impulsive, like everything that Ren does. Something like regret works its way into his eyes and Hux shakes his head in disgust. Regret is for the weak.

He slips the knife back into his pocket while Ren stews. He’s not afraid of him.

“You should be,” Ren says immediately, his eyes shining, his face half in darkness. 

Disregarding the fact that Ren just heard his thoughts, this line is so ridiculous that Hux has to laugh. Ren looks like he’s been slapped.

“Really, I don’t know who you’re keeping up this charade for, Ren. If you think I’ll fear you now because you’ve taken down that withered old snake, you’re delusional.”

“That’s not why,” Ren snaps, frozen in his doorway, his fist tight in anger.

“Oh, is it because you’ll rule the galaxy,” Hux says, stepping forward, sneering. “Or is it because you’ll hurt me.”

Ren’s fists shake, but Hux is drawn forward anyway, high on his own anger and the threat of danger that comes off of Ren in waves. He leans one arm against the doorway and stops, nearly nose to nose with Ren, well within striking distance of his bruised fists. It’s like taunting a wild animal.

“You want to rule the galaxy?” He sneers. “You want to hurt me? Then fucking _do_ it. Don’t just hide in here pretending that you’re in control.”

Hux is thrown backwards, hits the door with a dull thud and feels the air knocked out of him. He lands on his feet but slumps backwards and coughs involuntarily into his gloved hand, trying not to wheeze. Ren stares at him from across the room, arm outstretched. There is no anger on his face—instead a sharp regret. The Force wraps itself around Hux, keeps him upright.

“Get off me,” he snarls. His hair has fallen out of place but he doesn’t bother to fix it. Ren’s hand lowers slightly but he’s still reaching towards Hux, still in the shadow of his doorway.

Aware of his heavy breathing, unable to turn it off, Hux reaches for the door comm panel. Despite just being thrown against the wall, or perhaps because of it, he feels like he’s finally gained an upper hand and he wants to leave before Ren ruins it.

“Meet me on the bridge,” he says as the door opens. He goes to leave, but can’t help but turn back for a moment. Ren hasn’t moved. There’s some unreadable conflict playing across his face. “And find something to eat,” Hux says, rather quietly, and lets the door slide closed between them.

 

 

***

 

 

Kylo stares at the closed door, at the place where had Hux slid down to his feet and looked at him like he’d both passed a test and betrayed him by doing so. His hair had fallen out of place, as it so rarely did, and Hux hadn’t bothered to fix it, something Kylo never thought he’d see. Hux is obsessive about his hair, as he is obsessive about everything. His eyes had been red-rimmed when he entered, his projections wilder than usual. Kylo hadn’t even meant to read his thoughts; they’d been pouring off of him, anxiety, anger, and an undercurrent of _help me, help me, help me._

 _Help him,_ that voice says, but Kylo ignores it.

It’s true what he’d had told Hux; There is a mutiny in the works, he could sense it all over him, and now that he’s aware of it he can sense it in the very air that filters through his rooms. For some reason this has no effect on him, though he wonders vaguely what he will do if and when it happens, and what the mutineers will attempt to do to Hux. His hands itch for violence at the thought. He won’t agree to help Hux, won’t give him that satisfaction, but he refuses to let him die either.

It had started immediately, Kylo’s ill-advised fasciation with the General. The moment he first saw Hux standing on the bridge of the Finalizer he felt a chasm open in his chest and, for the first time in a long time, he _wanted_. All of his training, all of Snoke’s carefully cultivated words and lessons evaporated for a moment when Hux turned to look him up and down, a slight sneer playing across his face as he took in Kylo’s presence. 

Kylo didn’t care much for the First Order, they were stuffy, bureaucratic, lifeless, all the things he hated about the Republic politics of his previous life. But this man, this man could burn his heart out with a single look, could make whole worlds crumble with the force of his wrath. Kylo could feel it the moment he looked at him, the fantastic depths of this anger.

Hux seems to have sapped all Kylo’s emotions from the room. Thoughts of the impending mutiny, even the memories of Hux’s knife pressed against him, of Hux’s snarling face so near his own can’t inspire the same violent self-hatred he’s been stewing in for days. 

As he finally turns away from the door and regards the mess around him, the world goes silent again.

He rolls his eyes and he hears Rey sigh in frustration.

“I’m sorry, one moment,” she says in an undertone and Kylo knows immediately she’s not talking to him. He spins around, but it’s just her, smiling slightly at someone who isn’t there. She seems to walk in place for a moment, then stops, arms crossed, smile disappearing, and looks at him.

He wonders how much of their dream conversation she remembers.

“Who are you with?” Kylo says.

For some reason she flushes brilliantly.

“No one,” she says.

“Do they know about this?” He doesn’t know why he’s curious.

She nods. Something relaxes from her face and he realizes she’s looking over his exposed skin. He hides his hands behind his back.

She goes very still for a moment, her eyes hard.

“Tell me the truth,” she says, “have they done that to you? Have you been imprisoned for killing your master?” He just stares at her. “I can’t see your surroundings, I just see your bruises and bloody skin. You look gaunt, like you haven’t slept or eaten or washed since…” The fight in Snoke’s throne room hangs heavily between them.

He’s thankful suddenly that she’s not really there with him. He doesn’t think they can sense one another’s projections in this state unless physically touching, and right now the truth is more embarrassing than this fiction she’s invented.

“And what if I am imprisoned,” he says. “Would you come rescue me?” It comes out more sincere than he’d meant it.

Rey glares at him, as though she can sense his intended sarcasm.

“I’m never going near that ship again,” she says, shaking her head. “But enough of what-ifs, tell me honestly, are you in danger?”

“Do you care?” he says, because he doesn’t know how to answer that.

She rolls her eyes.

“Don’t be a child. If I don’t care, it’s your fault.”

“But you do,” he says. He means it as a taunt but it sounds flat.

She locks her jaw and glares at him harder, wanting to lie.

“Unfortunately,” she says after a moment.

Kylo looks away. 

With anyone else such a confession would make him feel like he had gained the upper hand, but with Rey it doesn’t. Instead something claws at his insides, puts a lump in his throat. How could she possibly care, after everything? Maybe that’s why they’re still connected, because neither of them can pretend hard enough that they don’t care about the other.

“I’m not in danger,” he says, looking at the floor. “No one cares about Snoke. Actually— I’ve been made Supreme Leader.”

She looks taken aback, like this wasn’t a possibility that she had considered. Like somehow she thought being taken prisoner by non-Force users was a more likely outcome than him being in command. He can’t help but feel insulted.

She narrows her eyes.

“Then why are you in this state?”

He looks away, again unsure how to answer her in a dignified manner. His silence tells her more than he’d like it to.

“It’s not too late,” she says, quietly. Her face is so very open again, like it had been on the lift on Snoke’s ship.

Kylo’s hands curl to fists. He wishes he could banish her from his thoughts. 

_Maybe she’s right._

No, he can’t face that choice.

“How long will you say that?” he says. “What will it take to make you see that you’re wrong? It’s too late. My path is clear. The rest of them understand that now. So should you.”

“Yes, they’ve all given up on you,” she says. “But I haven’t. I won’t. I saw what’s in your mind and I know that you’re better than this.”

“You really think they would take me back after—”

“I’m not asking you to come back to the resistance, or to join me. But I think you should leave the First Order. There’s nothing left for you there now that Snoke is gone.”

“I can still rule. The galaxy can still be united under my command.”

“The First Order hates the Force and those that can manipulate it. I could feel that all over that blasted ship. The only reason they followed Snoke was to take advantage of his power, and because they were too scared not to. They’re not scared of you, Ben.” 

The name goes through him like a knife.

“Do you really think they’ll let you keep control after everything that’s happened?” she says, watching his face. 

Why is she doing this? Why does she care?

“They can’t steal my command,” he says, though his mind is elsewhere. “I can kill them without even looking, I can control—”

“Yes, you’re very powerful,” she says sarcastically, “but when it comes down it, the stormtroopers, the pilots, the fighters, their loyalty lies with those who’ve cared for them and brainwashed them their entire lives, not with a cruel intruder who, until very recently, hid his face from them.”

Kylo blinks at her. It has never occurred to him that the stormtroopers wouldn’t trust him. It was part of following in Vader’s footsteps, being backed by the full, unquestioning might of his army.

_Times have changed._

He remembers suddenly what Hux had shouted at him as he stood, red-eyed and furious next to Snoke’s bisected body: _“You presume to command my army?”_

“Finn told me that he had never dared question them, that it didn’t even occur to him that he could do so—until you showed up. You threw around whoever got in your way, and his only friend was killed on one of your missions after following your orders.”

He remembers that fight on Jakku; It was quick and bloody. Troopers had been lost, but they were just numbers to him. Normally he could shut out troopers projections, but the emotions coming off FN-2187 had been different. Complex. Terrified. Kylo had barely wasted a thought on them until he’d gotten word that the trooper had defected with Dameron.

“Who is Finn?” he says, though of course he already knows. He senses something in the way that Rey says his name, and he wants to hear her explanation, to hear her describe the man that Kylo had fought in the woods. Sure enough, she looks down, embarrassed.

“He’s—he’s my friend. The ex-stormtrooper that escaped from your ship with Poe Dameron.”

Kylo nods. “The traitor.”

Rey’s eyes snap to him.

“You can’t betray a cause you didn’t choose to fight for,” she says.

Something about that stings, but he forces a slight smirk onto his face.

“That sounds like one of Skywalker’s great lines of morality. Did he tell you that?”

Rey searches his face for a moment, her mouth slightly, her expression sliding into something unreadable.

“Do you not know?” she says, slowly. “Luke is—Luke is gone.”

Kylo lets this wash over him for a moment, unsure exactly what emotion courses through his veins. Luke is dead. How? Surely he would have felt it… But no, he’s been cut off from Luke for too long, hasn’t felt his presence in the Force for years, why would he now.

“But—he—” he knows he sputtering but he can’t seem to get control of his words or his face. “He left me,” he blurts out, determined not to let Rey think he cares about the old man. “He left me on Crait, he said—”

_He said, “See you around, kid.”_

_He can’t be gone._

“Yes, he left Crait, then he brought his consciousness back to Ahch-To and chose to become one with the Force.”

Kylo leans against the wall and sinks down to sit on the floor, aware of the concerned look Rey is giving him but not caring quite enough to put on a charade. He always assumed he would kill Luke, that he would deprive the world of their great legend. But for Luke to just vanish—it was like he won one final game against Kylo. After everything, he got the last word.

_That’s not why you feel this way._

He gouges his nails into his forearms until his hands shake.

_He left her._

Kylo’s anger spikes and his fist flies into the metal wall. He’s vaguely aware of Rey’s startled gasp.

If Luke chose to leave this galaxy it means he chose to leave… _her._ Kylo had taken Han and Ben from her, had taken everything but her life, but for some reason it was far worse for Luke to have removed himself from the galaxy than for Kylo to have ripped him from it.

“It was peaceful,” Rey says. She’s nervous. “I could feel his joy—”

“I don’t care,” Kylo growls, his voice close to breaking. He wishes she would just go away. She’s misinterpreting this, he can see her sympathy and it makes his skin crawl.

_You don’t deserve it._

“I wanted to be the one to kill him,” Kylo says. “Now I’ll never get the chance.”

He looks at Rey, hoping she’s horrified, but instead she looks down her nose at him like he’s a child. She shakes her head.

“I don’t even have to touch you to know you’re lying,” she says.

Just as he opens his mouth to shout at her—goes to leap to his feet to grab her hand and make her understand what he’s feeling—she’s gone.

He hits the wall again, cursing, his uncle’s words on repeat in his head.

_See you around, kid._

 

Hux is twitchy on the bridge, his hands fidgeting with his gloves. He hides them behind his back and makes no comment when Kylo stops next to him, though the entire command center had gone silent when he appeared. 

He wishes he still had his mask. He hates his real face, its youth and naked emotions. Though there is something he hadn’t had when he’d worn the mask; the small thrill when Hux looks at him, as he does now, the true eye-contact, the knowledge that Hux can see him back.

He looks away, worried suddenly that all of this is displayed on his face.

He scans the projections of the officers, not bothering to look at any of them. Though some are frightened, Rey was right, most are simply curious. He wants to make them fear him, wishes he could cut a few of them down just for show. The command is top heavy anyway. But underneath their curiosity, pulses a darker undercurrent. They dislike Hux. They dislike Kylo. It wouldn’t bother him much, but their dislike has turned rancid, has grown a life of its own. 

There are no plans yet, none that Kylo can sense anyway. There may still be time. If they can regain control of their recent acquisitions, and maybe acquire a few more, their thoughts will settle. They will grow used to their new command.

 

***


	4. Chapter 4

The air of this planet is thick, almost a solid. Hux envies the stormtrooper’s helmets. He’d briefly considered using a mask himself, but no, there should be one human face visible during their conquest of Ustag 07. It’s a scrappy little planet, not even large enough to have it’s own name, and inhabited with small, rough-furred creatures that peak down at them from the caves and crevices in the mountains. It wouldn’t be worth their time but for the enormous amount of Gadolinite under their feet.

“Their base is in a valley between two peaks,” he’d said to the troopers before they’d left the ship. “There aren’t many of them, and they aren’t expecting an attack, but they’ve chosen their hideout well—it will be easy for them to defend.”

It’s why they’ve landed so far out: any closer and the outlaw’s presumably ancient radar technology would pick them up. On foot they can cut through the rocky path quickly, and infiltrate the camp before the outlaws have time to set up snipers in the surrounding mountains.

It should have been theirs in a matter of hours—the native creatures, though intelligent enough to want to resist them, were not capable of actually doing so. The reality, however, was much more complex. Something Hux had attempted to explain to Ren before Ren had given the order to attack.

“The planet is entirely under the control of a very small band of outlaws—”

“Then taking it should be no trouble,” Ren had said.

They stood side-by-side on the lookout deck above the bridge. The Ustag system and the stars beyond lay on the other side of reinforced glass. With anyone else, Hux would be sitting in a conference room, discussing plans around a table like the civilized beings they were. But as always, Ren insisted on the dramatic. Though, if he was honest, Hux couldn’t imagine sitting and calmly discussing plans with Ren. It would be too strange.

The other officers did not appreciated being shut out of these discussions, but Ren didn’t seemed to notice, despite his dire warnings about their collective state of mind. According to him, a large portion of the crew were mutinous, but not yet organized or motivated enough to form a plan of action. 

Hux has a hard time imagining that any of them would voluntarily stand before Ren’s lightsaber, but even he has been picking up on their collective indignation at taking orders from Snoke’s former apprentice. He’s unsure when he had been grouped with Ren in their minds, but he can feel their distrust of him growing by the day. If it does come to mutiny, he’s unsure what he will do, which side will stand on. If he’s even given a choice.

“It’s more complicated than just a band of outlaws,” Hux had said to Ren. “The native creatures and the outlaws will be easily overtaken, but politically it’s been tacitly agreed that the planet is a no-man’s-land. If they had their way, the remains of the republic, the trade federation, the neighboring planets, everyone with a ship and a few good blasters would try to take it for its Gadolinite. This planet could start a war—the entire galaxy knows this, so they stay away.”

“We’re already at war,” Ren had said. Hux got the impression that he was avoiding his eyes. “The Order needs to see progress and bold actions, and we need that Gadolinite to replenish our funds.”

When it was clear that, despite Hux’s warnings, Ren would not be swayed away from his attack, he finally saw fit to look Hux in the face. On the surface his eyes were hard, determined, but Hux could see just beneath that to an unhinged fragility, that same force that drove Ren to break his fingers and starve himself.

“We’ll take it, General, you’ll see,” he said.

Hux considered this for a moment, looking away from Ren’s suddenly insistent gaze.

“At least send a small party,” he said. “The outlaws will fall easily, and the smaller the party, the less likely our presence will be detected by other powers.”

Hux had expected Ren to be too stubborn to make compromises, but after a moment of searching Hux’s face and, he suspected, his mind, Ren agreed.

He had also agreed, after a long, exhausting, borderline violent argument, to stay on the ship and let Hux lead the team.

Despite the progress they’ve made—calming Canto Bight, retaking Lin’Taa, entering negotiations with the Enebor system—their position is still too precarious to both leave the ship. Yet Hux had felt it was too delicate a mission to not oversee directly. 

Ren had been at the hangar before Hux left with his small team of stormtroopers. Hux hadn’t expected him to come see them off, especially not alone. Hux looked around immediately for anyone that might be watching.

“You should be on the bridge,” he said to Ren when they were close enough to not be overheard by the troopers loading the ship behind them.

Ren said nothing for a moment, just stood there, slouched, his eyes wandering over Hux’s face. Hux turned away, going red.

“If that will be all, Supreme leader,” he said, turning away.

“Hux—” Ren said, too loudly. Hux looked back at him, hoping Ren could feel his annoyance at this odd display. Ren cleared his throat. “We’ll discuss strategies for deflection of the political fallout from this after you get back.”

Hux had nodded and boarded the ship. He knew Ren was watching him walk up the gangplank and he wanted to glance back, but he didn’t.

 

Lhun is with him. He would have preferred Borona, despite her recent coolness towards him, but Lhun is the better fighter and Ren had insisted. Thus far she’s kept her attitude in check, deferring to him at every opportunity, but there is a glint in her eye each time she says “Yes, Sir,” that makes Hux feel like he’s being mocked.

He’d tried hard not to snap at her on the ship when she’d questioned his abilities, asking pointedly if he’d like a quick refresher in the use of a blaster.

“I was top of my class in marksmanship,” he said, briskly as he’d shoved a blaster into each of his holsters. Regardless of his abilities, he didn’t anticipate needing to use them.

Lhun had cocked her head. “That was when the academy was still under your father’s control, wasn’t it?” She said, lightly.

Hux had ignored her, unsure entirely what she was implying, but refusing to engage.

Now, as they round a corner and see the rocky pass below leading to the camp, he tries not to wonder if she’s right, if his skills with a blaster haven’t atrophied in the years since the academy. It’s been almost as long since he’s been on a mission such as this. Usually it is Ren out on the front lines, wielding that lightsaber like a madman, and Hux up in the ship, his face perfectly blank while his insides clench with anxiety. He wonders if Ren is there now, standing on the observation deck, looking down at the little planet. He wonders what it would feel like if their positions were reversed, if he were up there and Ren were down here. What would he hope Ren’s fate would be?

One of the native horned creatures hops out from behind a rock to their left and stares down at them. A trooper near the front stops walking and looks at it, her blaster lowering from its 90 degree position, her posture slackening.

“Sir…” Hux hears her say. The other troopers are distracted by her, looking over at the horned creature as well.

“Move along,” he calls. 

Stopping is unacceptable and if he could, he would get the trooper’s ID to report her later, but there’s no time.

The stormtrooper armor is not built for stealth, and three of them stumble and fall before they finally reach the valley.

Hux is wired into their helmets, but he says nothing as they fan out around the camp, blasters at the ready. They’d discussed their plans on the ship, unsure of the kinds of security tech the outlaws might have. They head for a long stone building at the heart of the camp, and Hux keeps close to Lhun, both out of mistrust and a desire for protection. 

The building is long, low, and empty. The stone walls are cool to the touch.

Camp is quiet, with no signs of life. Hux gestures to Lhun to split up, and takes five troopers with him out the stone building’s back exit and into what looks like a town square. The camp is small enough that he can see between the huts and buildings to the troopers that surround it.

Something is wrong. Hux had expected action by now. But perhaps the men are out working the fields or hunting or whatever they did during the days. Or perhaps their days and nights are so long that they sometimes sleep while the sun is out. 

Just as he curses himself for not doing more research into the planet’s cycles and agriculture, a shot rings out. A trooper at the edge of the camp falls to the rocky ground. Hux has exactly one second to look up, see the sniper and the horned creature beside it, before blaster fire rains down on them. He feels a hand close around his upper arm, and a trooper drags him back through the door into the stone building.

In the moment it takes for his eyes to adjust, Lhun bursts through the door. Troopers rush in behind the both of them.

“You said they wouldn’t know we were coming!” She shouts.

Hux thinks quickly over what is happening, what he just saw.

“They must be communicating with the native creatures,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm. “The things saw us and must have run ahead to warn them.”

“Well what the fuck do we do? We’ve just walked into a trap!” She has her blaster out, and it’s dangerously close to being pointed at his head, he can feel it.  
Hux dearly wants to shout back, to point his own blaster in Lhun’s direction, but his mind is already going into overdrive, thinking over every detail of the camp he’s seen and laying it out like a map.

“Take cover,” he says, unnecessarily, into his comm. “Attempt to discern from which direction we’re taking fire.”

“It’s every direction, sir!” Comes a shout in his ear, nearly drown out by blaster fire.

Hux drags the trooper with the ship’s transmission module over to an enormous fireplace, grabs the module, and shoves the unfurled antennae up the chimney as far as it will go. They’re too far out to transmit anything but code.

 _Taking fire. Need backup,_ he taps out quickly, along with their coordinates.

“Stay here and wait for a response,” he tells the trooper, then presses his comm again. “Look at the ground,” he tell them all. “Look for any kind of hatch or staircase leading into the mountain.”

“You’re running away?” Lhun says, marching over to him. “You’re calling for backup?!”

“I’m being realistic!” He shouts at her, millimeters from loosing it, needing just a second to think through the plan that is half forming even as he looks at her…

“I always knew you were a coward, _Sir,_ the way you cowered before Snoke, the way you bend to Kylo Ren’s will—”

Hux pulls out his blaster, fully intending to shoot her, but instead he shoots downwards as a new possibility occurs to him. Stone blocks fall through the smoking hole in the floor. He shoots again and again until there is a size-able opening in front of him. He gestures to the trooper who had pulled him out of the blaster fire, and after a moment’s hesitation, she jumps down into the abyss. 

“There—there’s a tunnel down here, Sir,” she calls up to him.

Hux kneels by the hole and looks calmly up at Lhun. He doesn’t bother to acknowledge the shock on her face.

“There’s no way they were able to get in position on those peaks on such short notice; they must use this system of tunnels. I’m going down there to see if there’s a way out, or a way to sneak up on where they’re positioned. Wait here for my orders. Tell me if the ship makes contact.”

Lhun starts to splutter an objection, but Hux is already lowering himself through the hole and into the tunnel. 

The stone walls are expertly carved and supported by what looks like beams of pure Gadolinite, which glows yellow. The air is even thicker down here, and it smells sharp and metallic. The trooper waits to one side, blaster held nervously aloft, the glowing metal reflected eerily off her armor.

“Sir—?” she starts, but Hux cuts her off.

“You’re with me.”

“Yes, sir,” the trooper says immediately.

The tunnel stretches in both directions, but Hux picks the direction that slants slightly upwards, hoping this will lead up into the mountain.

He can’t believe how stupid this was. As they move stealthily through the tunnel he thinks over every decision he’s made thus far, wonders where he went wrong—

“Sir,” the trooper says from behind him. “There are men up ahead.”

He’s not sure how she knows this—he can hear nothing. He stops, a memory suddenly clicking into place, a strange suspicion forming in his head.

“You’re the stormtrooper that stopped walking earlier, on the way through the mountain pass.”

She hesitates, confused, nervous.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” she says.

“Why did you stop?”

“I—I shouldn’t have—”

“You knew the creatures could communicate, didn’t you?” he says.

“I guessed,” she says, very quietly.

Hux considers this for a moment, straining to hear voices in the distance.

“What’s your ID?”

The trooper takes a shaky little breath. “EV-9052,” she says.

He’s heard things about EV-9052, just small complaints overheard, passing gossip. That she’s odd, shy, cowardly. He once heard Phasma say that she was too slow-witted to be in the stormtrooper program at all. But Hux remembers how she pulled him inside before the other troopers had even realized what was happening, and he wonders if she is in fact slow-witted, or if she’s simply been hiding something.

He keeps walking, and after a moment, hears the trooper follow him. Her blaster is shaking in her hands.

“How far away are they, and how many are there?” he whispers to her.

“Um—a—at least three, but I can’t be sure where they are,” she says. She’s scared he’ll punish her for this when they’re back on the ship: her voice is shaking, her breathing heavy. They continue for a few moments, but soon EV-9052’s breaths are loud and coming in short bursts and Hux is sure if there are in fact men near, the two of them will be heard.

He whirls around and she gasps, takes a step back. He would shoot her right there if it wouldn’t make a sound, and if he wasn’t so damned curious.

“I’m sorry, Sir—”

“You’re not in trouble,” he snaps, and her breathing doesn’t change in the slightest. He takes her by the shoulders and she nearly drops her blaster her hands are shaking so badly. “Listen to me—I’m not going to reprimand you, I’m not going to hurt you. See for yourself, look…look into my mind,” he says, trying to remember little things that Ren has said, unsure how this works. 

She goes still, perhaps thinking him mad.

“I’m thinking something,” he says, though he isn’t even sure what he’s thinking at this point. “And I believe you can see what that is.”

Her breathing calms a bit and she stands up a little straighter. Her helmet is still shaking slightly in the glow from the Gadolinite. Hux lets go of her shoulders, but keeps still in front of her. He wonders if he’s wrong, if she’s lying about the men up ahead, if there’s some other explanation for her quick reflexes and correct prediction about the creatures.

“You’re—you're thinking about how you can’t sleep,” she says, very quietly. “And how when you wake up in the middle of the night, your breathing sounds like mind just did.”

He nods slightly, though he hadn’t realized his mind had gone there, had made that connection so easily.

“And you’re thinking about…Lord Ren,” she says, confused.

“Come on,” Hux says bruskly, and turns back up the tunnel. EV-9052’s breathing is steady behind him but he can still sense her confusion and trepidation.

“There are four of them,” she says after a few hundred yards. “They’re huddled together up ahead and they don’t expect anyone to be coming.”

“Good,” he says. “I’ll go in first—you cover me.”

She’s right—the lookouts are talking, their backs to the tunnel, no idea that someone creeps up towards them. Hux takes out two before the others can shout something in an unknown language and grab their blasters. It only takes him four shots, one for each of them, and they only manage to fire once. It misses both him and EV-9052. He stands surrounded by the fallen outlaws, and allows himself a short moment of pride. He hasn’t lost his marksmanship after all.

 

***

 

Kylo is the first to see the message because he is staring at the comm link when it arrives.

“They’re in trouble,” he yells, trying to ignore the way his blood goes cold. “Colonel Borona, send the reinforcements immediately!”

“Tie fighters too, sir?” she asks, and Hux’s warnings come back to him. _This planet could start a war_. But the time for stealth has apparently passed. _Taking fire_ could mean almost anything, and Kylo won’t send his men into such a situation without their full strength. Hux and his political fallout can deal.

“Yes,” he says.

“Are—are you accompanying us, sir?” she asks, and her hesitance is all it take for Kylo to make up his mind. His insides writhe at the idea of leaving Hux alone on the planet, but Kylo can’t afford to leave the ship with Datoo. He digs his fingernails into the palms of his hands, trying not to wonder where Hux is, if he’s the one who transmitted the message, if he’s in the midst of the blaster fire.

“No,” Kylo says. “Go!” 

Borona nods and barks orders to officers as she jogs towards the hangar where the reinforcements are already waiting.

Kylo makes himself relax his hands so he doesn’t end up bleeding all over the bridge. He senses surprise from the officers around him at the intensity of his reaction to this new development, and he wants to throw a few of them across the room. He forces himself to calm down.

_This is ruling. This is what you signed up for._

He wants to rip that little voice of reason out of his head, but he knows it’s right. He needs to stop showing weakness in front of the crew. He’d rather stay next to the transmission until it’s all over, but he can’t stand the projections from the officers right now. They press at him from all sides. He would kill all of them just to make it stop.

“Notify me if there’s any news,” he snaps at Mitaka, and heads to the lookout deck.

It’s thankfully empty, and he can see the planet down below them. It’s just a cloudy rock, really, and he can’t believe he was stupid enough to risk everything on it…

_Everything?_

What does he mean, ‘everything’?

Kylo slaps his face a few times, relishing the sharp pain of it. This is nothing. He needs to wake up and stop whining. He’s risked a handful of stormtroopers and a few officers, nothing more. If it’s really such a dangerous political move, he should have just given it up as a bad job and moved on, left the team to their own devices. 

_But Hux—_

Kylo slaps himself again. 

He should have left Hux to fight his way out of whatever he’s gotten himself into. He’s become too…involved. Now that he thinks about it, Kylo can hardly believe he’s let the general so far into his head, into his plans. What was he thinking? The man can hardly be trusted, especially taking into account Kylo’s ridiculous obsession with him. He remembers the smell of Hux’s hair that day on the transporter. Kylo had almost been in a trance, so drained of energy and emotion that that moment with Hux was one of the few he remembers that day after leaving Crait. His hair had smelled like soap and smoke and some unrecognizable spice.

What if Kylo had given himself away that day? What if Hux has been using this to his advantage? What if he’s dead? 

Kylo grabs a handful of his hair and shouts wordlessly. The planet was supposed to be easily taken, this wasn’t supposed to happen. He wishes there was something around to break, but the only thing in the room is the glass that separates him from the vacuum of space.

“I take it this is a bad time?”

Kylo whirls around to see Rey standing there, hands dangling by her sides.

“I can’t handle you right now, go away!” he shouts at her, knowing it’s useless.

“Too bad, here I am,” she says. She shakes her head, but her eyes are far away.

Kylo turns his back on her, but he can still hear her breathing behind him. It’s shaking slightly. She’s upset about something.

“What?!” he shouts at her, looking over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”

She is quiet so long that he turns back around, hating her, hating this connection between them.

She swallows a few times and he notices how her hands shake.

“Who are the Knights of Ren?” she says.

“What?” he says, staring at her. 

She takes a shaky breath again.

“We’ve been…contacted by a group of people calling themselves the Knights of Ren. Ren, like _Kylo_ Ren. Who are they?”

“What did they want?” Kylo says.

He hasn’t heard from the Knights in over a year.

“They showed up at our base and wreaked havok,” she says. “I sensed them coming and we managed to get away just in time, but I encountered one calling herself Sakue Ren.”

_Sakue._

Kylo has never seen her face, always hidden behind a mask, just as his had been, but he remembers her voice clearly. Soft, almost kind. Deceiving. 

“She said that I was going to pay for what I had done to their Supreme Leader, that they were going to kill me and wipe out the resistance themselves. She said that _I_ killed him, Ben, _me._ Is that what you told them?” 

She’s not sure what to feel. Fear of this new threat, worry for her friends, anger at him. It’s all there plain on her face. It seems so unfair to Kylo that the two of them, the two people who should be able to hide their emotions, should be cursed with such expressive features. What’s the point of commanding the Force, if their faces give away every little thought?

“Ben!” she shouts. 

“Yes!” He marches towards her. “I told them you killed Snoke. What did you think I would do? You said it yourself, they don’t trust me, they don’t fear me, they never would have let me live if they knew it was me. Yes, I blamed you, and now I’m Supreme Leader.”

Her eyebrows screw up and angry tears appear in her eyes.

“And are you happy with that? Because you look like hell.” She looks like she wants to hit him and he takes a step back. He doesn’t want her to touch him and see everything he’s feeling right now.

She folds her arms and thinks for a moment, clenching her eyes shut before she takes a deep breath.

“If you care for us at all…for me, for Leia—”

“Then what? I’ll come back? I’ll help you fight them?”

_You’ll tell the truth._

She stares at him, eyebrows still drawn together. She opens her mouth, blinking quickly.

“Supreme Leader?” 

Kylo turns to see Mitaka standing uncertainly in the doorway. In an instant, the connection is broken. Rey is gone. The air around where she had stood looks strange for a moment, almost shimmering.

 _If you care for us at all,_ she’d said.

Kylo rounds on Mitaka and he Lieutenant flinches.

“Sir, the reinforcements have successfully landed. They’re beginning the counter-attack now.”

Kylo says nothing, just sweeps past and heads back for the bridge. After a moment, Mitaka follows him but Kylo ignores him.

Despite sitting stationary in peaceful space, the bridge is still full of officers. They need all hands on deck in case they need to make a quick getaway.

Kylo ignores their projections and stares, and goes to stand at the window.

The Knights have resurfaced. He’d never been particularly close with any of them, their connection was forged by Snoke. It was also Snoke who’d kept them distant from one another. It had never occurred to him before, but now that Snoke’s mortality had been made clear it seemed so obvious. They were kept apart so they wouldn't band together and rise up against him. As such, Kylo had never known if each of their relationship with Snoke was similar to his own, but he can only guess that they’d also lived with him in their heads for most of their lives, that they’s also felt that glorious, terrifying emptiness when he died.

And now they’re after vengeance, after Rey. He doesn’t know why she told him this. There is nothing he can do for her right now, not in his current position…

“Supreme Leader,” an officer says behind him. “We’ve received word that the reinforcements have secured the camp.”

“And the outlaws?” he says, trying not to let the relief be heard in his voice.

“The majority has been disposed of, but a small band have disappeared deeper into the mountains and off our radar.”

“Forget them,” Kylo says immediately, “do a sweep of the rest of the planet and set up our own base at the camp. We’ll take care of them when they resurface.”

“Very good, Sir,” the officer says, and leave to relay the orders to the transmitter.

Kylo looks down at the planet below them. He wants to feel triumphant but instead the dread in his stomach has become heavy like a stone. Something is wrong.

_Lord Ren._

Kylo jumps, looking around wildly. The officers around him startle at his sudden movement, but keep their eyes fixedly on their workstations.

There is a new voice inside his head, not Rey, not his own, no one familiar. He feels a sudden dizziness, as though from blood loss, and stumbles against the bulkhead. 

“Supreme Leader—”says an officer, but he throws out an arm and the man is pushed away with the Force.

 _Help._ The voice sounds strained, as though it’s expending an enormous amount of energy to reach him, and sapping some of his as well. Black spots cloud his vision.

_The General has been captured._

The bridge has gone silent. Kylo just hears his own labored breathing. He listens for a moment, reaching out to the Force, but the voice is gone. He blinks away the black spots and stands up straight, looking around at the officers.

“Prepare my ship,” he says, his mind already down on the planet, on the reckoning that is coming for the outlaws.

Mitaka nods immediately. His projections are confused and nervous, as are most of the thoughts Kylo drifts through as he marches after him toward the hanger. One note of surprised excitement stabs through Kylo’s consciousness. Colonel Datoo watches him, his mind moving quickly. Kylo stops in the hallway. Datoo doesn’t shout his plans, but they are not difficult to see. Their little band of mutineers doesn’t have a real plan yet, but once Kylo is off the ship Datoo will jump the gun, he’ll start he mutiny himself. He’ll destroy the entire camp on Ustag 07 if he has to to ensure they won’t come after him. He’ll lose Lhun, but right now he doesn’t really care.

Kylo turns back and sees Datoo’s eyes widen and the slight smile slide off his face. This gutless little man means to name himself Supreme Leader, means to rule the galaxy after Kylo is gone. It would be so easy to snap his neck right now, or to cut him cleanly in half with his lightsaber. But he doesn’t know how deep this mutiny goes, and disposing of its leader may only lead the others to panic and attack. There is still time to save the First Order, they haven’t crumbled yet, and he won’t let them crumble beneath the corpse of one pathetic man.

Kylo stalks up to Datoo, who takes a step back, face twitching, projections morphing to surprise and animal-panic. Kylo’s heart swells. Rey was wrong—they are scared of him.

Kylo doesn’t touch him with the Force, doesn’t reach for his lightsaber, just puts on his most menacing face and looks down at him.

“You were on Crait, weren’t you?” he says, not bothering to address Datoo with his title. He nods quickly, not making eye-contact.

“Then you’ll have seen Luke Skywalker. You saw how he deflected the might of our guns, how he dodged our attack, and how he vanished when he decided the fight was over. He went home, but he just as easily could have gone anywhere in the galaxy. He could have appeared right behind you.”

Datoo shakes slightly, but doesn’t quite cower, trying to save face in front of his officers.

Kylo lets his voice go low and dangerous.

“That man trained me. If you shoot at that planet while I am on it, you won’t give me so much as a scratch. And I will tear this galaxy apart until I find you.”

He ignites his lightsaber and Datoo, bathed in red, flinches beautifully.

“I’ve hurt people in a hundred different ways with this,” Kylo says, watching the saber spark and crackle. “But there are a hundred more that I’d like to try. How many of my ideas do you think you can handle before your body succumbs to death?”

He powers down the lightsaber so suddenly that Datoo gasps, and leaves him standing there shaking. He checks his projects as he walks away, but Datoo is feeling nothing at the moment but pure terror. It burns in Kylo’s veins like a drug.

If Datoo recovers enough to work out the truth of this lie, Kylo might be in trouble. At this point, however, he has no other choice but to rely on the crew’s paltry understanding of the Force. He heads for the hangar, ignoring the whispers that break out as soon as they think he’s out of earshot.

 _The General has been captured._ Hux is in danger.

 

If this were a very different situation, Kylo might actually enjoy the mountains. He tells himself that he was made for the depths of space, that he belongs in that cold emptiness, but each time he’s on land, his heart betrays him with longing. 

The mountains are rocky and purple-gray, with little patches of misty forest, and dark caves filled with the yellow glow of Gadolinite. 

As he hikes down to the camp he reaches out with the Force, searching for the voice that contacted him. If he can find the voice, he will find Hux.

But all he senses are the horned creatures. Their projections are intelligent, full of intent. They can’t speak, they have no language, but they can communicate in their own, primitive way. Each time he passes one, he wipes himself from its memory.

Ever since using the disappearing act on Crait to intimidate Datoo, Kylo can’t get Luke out of his head. It’s as though speaking his name had awakened his ghost. It’s not quite his presence that Kylo feels all around him, more an awareness of the possibility. Luke could be around the next corner, or the next. He could be looking over Kylo’s shoulder right now. Unless his ghost will decide to stay on that damned island too.

The camp is overrun with troopers and officers from the reinforcement team. The tie fighters, unable to land on the uneven ground, have already gone back to the ship. Colonel Lhun finds him immediately. The ship must have sent word of his imminent arrival.

“Sir, we’ve taken the camp, there’s—”

“Where is the General?” Kylo says. Lhun’s projections turn disgruntled and nervous at this reaction. She was planning on diverting his attention, on making sure the General stayed lost to them. Kylo clenches his fists; wants to tear the Colonel’s throat out with his bare hands.

“We’re not sure,” she says. “He ran off into the mountains and has gone missing.”

Even if he couldn’t see into her mind he could see her lie. Her jaw is too clenched, nose stuck too high in the air.

“He went into the tunnels looking for the outlaws,” Kylo says, and Lhun’s face hardens. “You can’t lie to me, Colonel.” 

“Sir,” she starts, but he pushes past her and marches into the camp. The troopers turn to watch him but for once he doesn’t care that he no longer has the mask. He feels them avert their eyes from his fury, their fear following him into the long building at the center of the camp that he sensed Lhun trying not to think about.

A few wounded troopers sit with emergency droids, waiting to be evac-ed to the transporter shuttle. In the corner, with two Lieutenants’ blasters trained on him, sits a cuffed outlaw.

“Sir,” an officer says, perhaps guessing Kylo’s intentions, “This man has surrendered and we mean to use to him to learn more about the geography of this—”

But Kylo doesn’t care. The Force is wrapped around the man’s throat before he can even look up and see what is happening. Kylo doesn’t need words—he pulls what he needs right out of the man’s mind. In his pain and panic, his defenses disappear. Kylo sees the tunnel, sees the outlaws, sees the hidden stronghold up in the mountains.

He should leave him alive for his usefulness to the officers, but he can’t help it. With a flick of his wrist he crushes the outlaw’s windpipe, and the man collapses on the floor, eyes rolling, coughing blood.

Kylo leaves the body choking behind him and kicks over equipment and medical droids until he finds it: a hole in the stone floor. Without a word to the officers, he jumps down into the darkness.

 

Hux has always hated him; Kylo had felt it the moment they met. Somehow it had made Kylo want him even more. 

Snoke had often made subtle references to Kylo’s need to purge himself of his “desires.” They both knew to what he was referring. Kylo was never alone in his own head, Snoke saw everything, felt everything. There were times in the shower or in the dark, late at night, when he couldn’t stand it any more and he needed to get himself off, Kylo could feel a little twinge at the back of his mind and would wonder if Snoke was there, watching him, feeling what he was feeling, knowing who and what he was thinking about.

It made him hate Hux, made him hate himself even more. Somehow Snoke was never part of the equation. He wasn’t human, he was a force of nature. It was impossible to hate something so elemental.

Sometimes Snoke would sneak back into his mind the morning after these transgressions, when Kylo had to see Hux on the bridge, had to talk to him and feel his hatred. Snoke would just sit there, heavy on his mind. He was sure Snoke’s reasoning for this would have been something official, needing to be present for their strategic conversations or something, but Kylo knew the real reason. It was to make him remember his shame. When he looked at Hux’s mouth he wouldn’t be able to avoid remembering the previous night and what he’d imagined that mouth doing to him.

There’d been times he’d deluded himself into thinking something of his preoccupation was reciprocated, times late at night when Hux was visibly exhausted and just barely let his guard down, times when they were yelling at one another and Hux’s projections became murky and confused in Kylo’s presence, or when his eyes lingered a second too long on Kylo’s body.

Snoke had only spoken of it outright once, when Kylo had returned to him directly from the med bay, still high on his anger and embarrassment from his encounter with Hux. Snoke had looked down at him from his enormous holographic throne and squinted his eyes. Kylo had felt him rush through his mind. 

“You must let go of your obsession with the general,” he said. “Or it will be your downfall.”

 

The mountain tunnel is lit by the glow from the Gadolinite and Kylo takes the steady incline at a run until it’s so steep and rocky that he is forced to climb. He feels the men up ahead. The more he lets his anger grow, the stronger he feels their presence. In the darkness, in the yellow light, he feels like he might grow fangs, might spit venom.

When the tunnel levels out and widens, Kylo sees the guards up ahead. He cuts through them easily, they barely have time to unholster their blaster before he’s on them. He wants to prolong their deaths, make them suffer, but time is of the essence. He doesn’t check their minds for Hux, they must be keeping him in the stronghold, probably planning on using him to negotiate their escape.

As he pushes his way through the tunnel, which is rapidly widening into a cavern, another presence grows. The owner of the voice is near.

The last of the outlaws are holed up in a low cave, hiding behind pillars of Gadolinite and piles of rock. They shoot at him but he deflects their blows easily. He tears them apart, crushes them with the force, crumples the Gadolinite into little spikes that he sends flying through their bodies. 

He doesn’t need any of them alive, he can feel exactly where Hux is being held: in a carved out room behind a makeshift wooden door. A heavy chain holds it in place and, when the last of the outlaws are bleeding out on the ground, Kylo blasts it apart.

Hux lays on the other side of the room, slumped over, unmoving on the floor. His hands are tied behind his back. Someone else in the room: a helmet-less stormtrooper, her short, mousy hair standing on end, eyes wide and frightened, hands tied at the wrists.

“Lord Ren!” she says, struggling to her knees. He recognizes her voice. There’s a large bruise on her cheekbone, but she seems otherwise unhurt.

Kylo rushes over to Hux.

“What’s wrong with him?” he snaps, the back of his mind rushing through questions about this girl, what she’s doing here, how Force-sensitive she is, how he has never noticed her on the ship—

“He—they hit him until he passed out,” she says. “They wanted our help retaking the camp…I don’t think they understand who we are.”

“Understood,” Kylo says. “Past tense. They’re all dead.”

He kneels and pulls Hux off the ground and into his lap. His face is bloody, not terribly bruised, but there’s a sizable lump on one side of his head. His hair is redder than usual, tinged with blood. His bottom lip is broken and bleeding.

Kylo checks the girl’s mind. He can feel the Force there, though she hardly knows how to use it. She is thinking about the outlaws: They had hit her only once before Hux had put himself in front of her. One of them had thrown him against the wall.

Kylo resists the urge to glower at her. She’s a stormtrooper, it was her job to protect her General, not the other way around.

“Hux,” he says, and shakes his shoulders. He’s not dead—he’s on the verge of consciousness, Kylo can feel it. Hux’s eyes drift open, confused. His mouth opens slightly when he sees Kylo’s face above him.

“Fucking hell,” he breathes. “It’s you.” His projections are those of a bird released from a cage. Despite his bruises, despite the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, he soars.

 

***


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg I'm sorry it's been so long since I last updated! I started Grad school and these last few months have been crazy 0_0  
> BUT summer vacation is coming up so I'm hoping to update more regularly from now on. Thanks for sticking with me!!
> 
>  
> 
> *** Trigger warning for this chapter for a description of a past sexual assault on a female character. ***

All Hux wants to do after leaving the med bay is get spectacularly drunk. The last twenty-four hours have been reduced down to partial images—the glow of the tunnel, the stormtrooper’s mind touching his, the feeling of his head hitting the wall, Ren’s arms around him—and he’s desperate to erase them by whatever means necessary. He’s not sure what happened to Ren or the trooper after they boarded the Finalizer. The last thing he remembers before coming to covered in bacta pads, was being carried by Ren back through the tunnel and up into the camp. He’d been too delirious to be embarrassed by it then, but he certainly is now.

They’d wanted to wheel him from the med bay to his quarters in a chair but he’d flat out refused. There is only so much humiliation he can take. The medics wouldn’t let him leave, despite his threats of execution, without him at least agreeing to take a medical droid with him to monitor for potential brain damage. The stupid thing bleeps next to him as he enters his chambers. He briefly wonders if he can close the door before it follows him, but too late.

He should get on his datapad and start fixing this mess they’ve gotten themselves into—their takeover of Ustag 07 has of course been noted by most of the galaxy. No one has said or done anything yet, but hackles have been raised, knives have been sharpened.

Instead, he grabs a bottle and sits on his bed, wondering vaguely if he’s in shock. He should feel rested after his bout in the med bay but he doesn’t. He drinks too much too quickly. It burns his near-empty stomach.

The medical droid beeps at him—he knows he shouldn’t be drinking on top of potential brain damage—but he throws a coaster at it and it stops.

He can almost feel the physical weight of it all bearing down on him: it’ll compress his spine until it snaps. It’s not the pain. His face is healed, the internal bleeding was minimal, and in any case, pain is easily dealt with. It’s the failed mission, it’s Colonel Datoo, it’s the others, across the galaxy on different bases, different ships, their bonds loosening as they grapple with their new leadership. 

It’s the stormtrooper, it’s the feeling of Hux’s mind being boarded like a ship, it’s the realization that Ren has never done that to him. 

It’s the feeling he always gets when returning to deep space, it’s the tightening in his chest, the awareness of the impossibly cold, deadly vacuum on the other side of the bulkheads. 

It’s the overwhelming difficulty to breath, it’s the rum that burns his throat but can’t clear his lungs. It’s the panic that strikes him in the back of the neck, shivers down his body, knees on the floor, droid rushing over, stabbing with him a sedative. It’s his hand reaching out for the thing’s stupid metal body, it’s the memory of arms around him, Ren’s arms.

 

 

***

 

Kylo had half expected the ship to be gone by the time they reached the transporters, but it seemed that his threats to Datoo had an effect. The man wouldn’t look him in the eye after they’d boarded, his projections small and shamed.

His fear has only slightly ebbed over the past few cycles. Kylo isn’t sure how much time he has bought himself, or if it was in fact a very wise move after all. Datoo is more scared of him than he’d thought, than Rey had led him to believe, but that doesn’t mean loyalty, doesn’t mean the officers can’t summon the courage to band together.

However, he feels no ill-intent from them as he’s briefed. Datoo can’t seem to look at him, and Lhun, Borona, and the rest are cold and quiet. They give him the details of the aftereffects of Ustag 07, and of the riots breaking out across the Wiklohn System. They tell him about the Retribution deserting the fleet entirely, the officers selling off parts of the ship on Jakku, and selling the stormtroopers to slavers on Tatooine. His stomach clenches and flips over as though the artificial gravity has been turned off. His grandfather had been a slave on Tatooine.

Somehow he leaves the meeting without strangling any of them, gets back to his rooms and wrecks the new desk that a maintenance worker had just installed the day before.

The Force has not connected him with Rey since that day on the observation deck. Several times he’s felt her presence, as though she is standing over his shoulder, but each time he turns to look for her, the feeling is gone. 

He has a theory: Rey has discovered how to hide herself in the Force. 

Presumably, this is to elude the Knights of Ren. Kylo keeps wondering if the Order will feel the tremors of this chase that is happening somewhere in the galaxy, but there is nothing. 

It is no surprise to him that the Knights have not contacted him. Snoke made a game of pitting them against each other, and Kylo was so obviously Snoke’s favorite. The others have apparently made amends—though Kylo has no doubt these acquaintanceships are uneasy at best—but there is no chance they’ll seek him out to join them.

_You can still find them. You can tell the truth._

Hux has been in the med bay for too long. Ren can’t stop thinking about his blood soaked hair, about the look on his face when he’d said, “it’s you.”

There are things he needs to do, problems yet to be worked out in his head—The Knights, Rey, the Force-sensitive stormtrooper, the entire fucking galaxy—but he can’t yet, not when Hux is lying under a pile of bacta pads because Kylo was too proud to listen to him about that stupid fucking planet…

He feels when Hux is released to his rooms. His projections want to dive back down to that planet and burrow so far underground that he’s crushed by the mountain. 

The crew don’t seem to notice his humiliation. If anything, Kylo has sensed a newfound respect they have for Hux. Despite the higher officers’ attempts to quash them, word of what Hux got up to on Ustag 07 has spread rapidly through the ranks. Through the stormtrooper ranks in particular. It is in their nature to place more value on physical prowess and bravery than on intelligence or strategy, and they are taken with the General’s daring attempt to bring down the outlaws himself.

Kylo knows it was madness, complete insanity for Hux to think he could take them all out by himself. What the hell had he been thinking?

As soon as he feels Hux shut himself in his quarters, Kylo can relax, can think. 

He meditates, sending his mind out in search of the stormtrooper. Her sensitivity to the Force had been far more potent on Ustag 07. He can’t blame himself too badly for not sensing her before, in deep space the Force settles around her only slightly more heavily than those around her. 

He finds her in the trooper barracks. She’s alone, as he senses she often is. There’s a weariness about her, not of the body but of the mind. Her mind is entirely open to him. Unlike so many on this ship, there are no barriers up around her thoughts or memories. He can see her ID clearly. It is her identity, unlike many of the troopers, she has never been given a nickname.

_EV-9052,_ he says, pushing his words directly into her mind. She jumps, panicked, drops whatever she was holding.

_Lord Ren?_ She says, in anticipation and dread. 

_Come to the audience chamber immediately._

As their Supreme Leader, Snoke had only been aboard the Finalizer once, but the chamber had been created for that single occasion. It lies at the bottom of the ship, in the very center, surrounded by cargo holds. Such a location might have been an insult to the Supreme Leader, had not the room itself been so spectacular.

It’s empty, as always, when Kylo enters. Even the officers won’t go near it. The chamber is entirely black, the high ceiling disappearing into darkness. As he walks, the weight of his footsteps activate the lights in the floor and when he looks back at the doors he shut behind him, a path of ice blue footprints glows in the dark stone.

In the center of the floor is a round window looking out into space. Kylo sits at the center of the glass and meditates above the stars. He imagines for a moment that he’s really out there, floating in space—His skin freezing and crystalizing around him. He’s cocooned, the Force and the void of space reshaping his insides into something harder. Something better. He once thought such a transformation was possible. Maybe it’s muscle memory, being in this place, thinking these thoughts.

He wonders if it’s possible to survive out there. He’s suspicious about how General Organa survived the explosion on her ship, wonders if the Light has found a way to do it.

He pushes these thoughts from his mind—banishes them to the vacuum below him.

Hux is in his chambers many floors above, probably already doing damage control reagarding Ustag 07. Kylo can feel him, but he doesn’t let his consciousness wander. If he does he wont want to leave, wont want to spend the energy parsing out this new power on his ship.

The trooper makes her way down the many levels to him. She’s unsure if she’s allowed in this part of the ship, and her fear makes her presence sharp in his mind. Now that Snoke is gone no one cares who comes down here. The stone room is all but forgotten, now only an irritating extra factor when it comes to calculating fuel.

Kylo feels something on the other side of the room: Snoke’s throne. It’s massive, made of black rock from the volcanos of Mustafar. Snoke’s energy lingers there like an echo. Kylo wants to send it reeling through the glass floor and into space.

Before he can really consider what to do with it—he can’t just ignore it sitting there like Snoke might materialize and sit in it—the trooper stands outside the doors.

Kylo Force-lifts himself a few feet off the floor and immediately imagines Hux laughing at him. He’d probably say something about Kylo’s overactive sense of drama, and Kylo would yell at him for playing the hero in those damn tunnels.

The trooper opens the doors and sees him, hovering there. Her mind is nearly outside itself, hovering between the fear that she’s about to die, and a small, somber hope that she can’t let herself name. She has absolutely no read on why she’s been called here, and if she asked him, Kylo’s not entirely sure he could tell her.

“S—sir,” she says when the doors have closed behind her. She wears her trooper armor. Helmet, but no blaster. She means this as a subservient, come-in-peace gesture, and Kylo isn’t sure if this means that she’s a coward, or that she’s loyal to him. He lowers himself to the glass floor.

“EV-9052,” he says, cursing Hux for his awkward identification system. “You don’t have a nickname.”

“No, Sir. We’re not allowed nicknames—”

“But most troopers have them anyway. You don’t. Why?”

She stands still for a moment. He can see the entire map of her mind, doesn’t need for her to say it aloud.

“Take off the helmet,” he says, when she’s silent for too long.

She does, eyes wide, hair standing on end. Her hooked nose is strangely elegant. The blue glow on her skin makes her look startlingly young. For a moment he can’t believe such a person has been trained in combat.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says. “I’m not sure how to answer that. I don’t know why they never gave me a nickname. I suppose I’ve never really had…a connection with anyone.”

She won’t look at him, staring instead at the stars on the other side of the glass floor.

“Come here,” he says, and something about those words and that tone of voice send a spike of fear through her. She approaches him anyway, her hands shaking. She’s hesitant on the glass, as though it won’t support the both of them. 

“Sit down.”

She sits crosslegged a few feet in front of him, awkward in her armor. Her eyes dart around them, unable to land on anything. 

“You were with General Hux on Ustag 07,” he says.

She nods quickly, going cold with fear. She thinks she’s here to be punished.

“I’m going to look into your mind and see what happened that day,” he says. His voice is strained with a gentleness that he hadn’t anticipated attempting.

She nods again and takes a deep breath.

_She hears the creatures’ intent but is too afraid to speak up. The General yells to keep moving._

_She pulls the General out of the blaster fire. He scares her but she likes him anyway, likes him for his hair and for the pangs of desperate heartache she sometimes feels shooting off of him._

_Somehow he guesses her secret—invites her into his mind—it’s full of panic attacks, sleepless nights, alcohol, suspicion—and Kylo Ren._

_He takes out the guards one by one but there are more than she’d thought. It’s her fault—they’re captured—hurt—it’s her fault. The outlaws hit her in the face and the General yells at them to leave her alone. She is frozen in shock until he’s unconscious on the ground, still trying to work out the emotion that coursed through him in protecting her. It’s as though he threw himself in front of something made of diamonds, something valuable, something unique and important._

_She has to save him._

_She doesn’t know how she does it—she finds Lord Ren aboard the Finalizer—reaches out to his mind—she sleeps for hours, the energy emptied from her veins. She wakes up when she feels his presence—knows that he’s coming for the General, can sense his fury and resolve and something deeper, something dark and chaotic when he thinks about General Hux…_

Kylo starts to pull himself free, but there is something else, something at the edge of her mind since she’d heard those words again…

_The barracks showers—years ago—the women shower in packs for protection but she’s tired today, she shot someone today, she killed someone today—she’s disoriented—should have thought—should have been more careful. It’s possible he’s waiting for her—more likely he decides in an instant—she feels the energy of him turn sour before he even says it—“come here,” and she feels his hands on her—she wants to yell but her voice is gone, wants to use this strange power she has, but she doesn’t know how, doesn’t think it even works like that—she can feel his thoughts—they’re as horrible as his hands—she can’t get away from him—she tells no one—this moment lives inside her forever._

Her panic, the poisonous claws of the memory wrap themselves around Kylo’s throat: it’s one part Luke’s betrayal, two parts Snoke’s invasion of his mind, and million other horrors he doesn’t recognize and will never know. There’s hatred there, but it’s aimed at herself, and it makes Kylo want to rip his own heart out. He can’t breathe.

Kylo separates from her mind with a gasp.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know why I was thinking about that—I’m sorry, Lord Ren—”

“Stop,” he says, breathing heavily, staring at the floor. He tries to force his mind back to the memories of Ustag 07, back to Hux, to her thoughts about his red hair—but the memory of the man’s body, his hands and mouth—it crawls back up Kylo’s throat with murderous rage. For a moment he thinks he might vomit. He holds the Force tightly, closes his eyes until the feeling passes.

“Do you want to kill him?” he asks when he finally opens his eyes. He keeps his voice steady. It’s an offer. If she says yes they’ll hunt him down together. He’ll teach her to rip him apart piece by piece without getting her hands dirty.

“He’s already dead,” she says, her voice small. Kylo checks her mind. The man—Parallax to his friends—had died on Starkiller base. She hates that he’s dead, that he was allowed to die just like the others, a hero’s death. She’d never wanted to kill him—she couldn’t stand to look at him let alone enact any sort of action upon him—but she’d wanted desperately for him to be punished, to be thrown in some pit somewhere and made to suffer endlessly.

“I’m sorry he died so easily,” Kylo says.

He can’t quite remember why they’re here, or what he’s doing.

They sit in silence, stewing in the leftover mess of the memory strewn out between them.

Kylo wonders if there’s a system in place for preventing such attacks. If there is, it’s apparently ineffective. He doesn’t know why this has never occurred to him before. These are Hux’s stormtroopers. Does Hux knows about problems such as these in his program?

“What is wrong with me?” She asks, suddenly. She’s looking at him for the first time, her eyes misty, and he thinks for a confused moment that she’s talking about Parallax. But no—she means the Force.

He considers for a moment, trying to feel her energy, her control of the Force.

“You’re Force-sensitive,” he says, though this is obvious. “You have the ability to manipulate the energy between all beings, and the ability to feel the energies of those beings.”

She thinks this over.

“I could feel you,” she says. “All over the ship. I can feel everyone, but you were always the biggest and brightest. The Force clings to you. It always made me look. Did you…did you feel that about me, too?”

He shakes his head and he feels a stab of hurt from her, immediately chastised and scabbed over.

“You’re energy is strange,” he says. “It’s clear that it’s powerful, it took power to reach me from that planet. But it’s like it’s all turned in on itself. Most Force-sensitive people exude the Force, unless they know how to hide it, like how you described me. But yours…” he thinks about Parallax. “I think yours is protecting you.”

She looks away, feels like she’s failed at something.

Kylo suddenly questions his own motives for bringing her here. Did he really need to see what he already knew happened to Hux on Ustag 07? Or was he desperate—after Snoke, after Rey—to again feel the energy of someone else connected to the Force. Where does he mean this to go? Snoke would have forbid him from taking an apprentice, and he’s not sure if this girl’s energy is built for fighting anyway. 

But he’s curious. He hasn’t encountered such a protective use of the Force since his—since he was regularly in contact with General Organa _._ Despite Luke’s assurances, Ben had always assumed this defensive energy lacked power, but the girl sitting in front of Kylo now seems to disprove that entirely.

He wants to do something. It’s probably stupid, probably reckless with all the suspicion and distrust on the ship, but Snoke is not here to tell him he can’t.

“I want you to come to this room every day at 1800,” he says. He knows this is during her off-hours, he can see her days full of pointless patrols and training exercises. Her eyes go wide. She wants to smile but she doesn’t know if this is a good thing or not. Her heart lifts anyway. At least it’s something different, something _new—_ the monotony is killing her.

“Thank you, Sir,” she says, and bows her head.

“Don’t tell anyone. If anyone questions you, tell them you’re on a special assignment from the Supreme Leader. I’ll feel it if you get into trouble.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she says again.

“You’re dismissed, EV-9052.”

She bows again and gets to her feet, her armor clanging gracelessly together. He closes his eyes and feels her mind as she puts her helmet back on. She’s elated, unsure how to feel, but wanting to float on air back to the barracks. She’d never deserved anything, not even a nickname, but now—but now—

Kylo detaches, leaves them both to their own thoughts.

 

***

 

Hux is still drunk when he wakes up, though not as dizzyingly, recklessly wasted as he had been when the droid had put him to sleep. He picks himself up off the floor, disgusted that he let himself pass out there. The droid hovers near him. He should shower and eat something, but he just grabs his datapad. 

The Ustag 07 situation is deteriorating already. Other ships, the Absolution, the Silencer, are requesting to meet the new Supreme Leader at last, are questioning why he has yet to come to them, are questioning the story of what happened to Leader Snoke in the Resistance battle. News of the Retribution’s desertion has already reached the far corners of the galaxy and Hux seems to be the last to know.

The Finalizer has sent a crew to set up a base at the former outlaw camp on Ustag 07 and they’re beginning to extract the most accessible chunks of Gadolinite, but he doesn’t know how long they’ll have before the planet is swarmed and picked apart like a carcass. They’ll just need to work as quickly as possible. Though of course if everyone gets ahold of large quantities of Gadolinite, the galactic prices will plummet…

The datapad spins in front of him. He’s not sure of the last time he’d eaten. Just as he thinks this, there’s a ping at the door. His heart leaps into his throat, he’s suddenly very aware of his greasy hair, his med bay clothes, his liquored breath.

He opens the door anyway to see a droid waiting for him, holding a tray. There’s a note on it, scrawled in messy, smudgy handwriting that says _eat this._

He stares down at it for a moment, cycling through the possibilities, though he knows immediately that the note is from Ren. Only Ren would use an actual old-fashioned ink pen in order to boss him around. He puts the door on hold and goes to his desk, the room around him only slightly fuzzy. He finds an old drafting pencil and under _eat this,_ he writes _no._ He sends the droid back to where it came from. No, thank you. Return to sender. Because how dare Ren send food to his rooms like he’s some kind of fucking invalid.

Back in his room alone he takes stock of his hazy emotions and is surprised to find that he’s not actually pissed at Ren right now. He’s not sure why he sent back the food, but it wasn’t out of anger. He just knows that he would rather lie on his floor and watch the room spin and feel his insides crawl with hunger than accept whatever it is that Ren is offering him.

He can handle this. He does not require rescue. He’ll wait a dignified amount of time and then send for food himself.

He might fall asleep for a time, or he might simply slip into a sort of drunken absence of rationality, but when he comes back to himself the door is pinging again and his insides clench up tighter than before.

He doesn’t need the Force to know that it’s Ren on the other side of that door. The pings sound angry. Hux could just refuse to answer—he’s in no shape to be seen by another human anyway—but then Ren might do something stupid, like tear the door out of the wall.

So he opens it.

Ren stands there, face tight in anger that slides off his face as he looks Hux over, taking in his disheveled hair and the ill-fitting, basic uniform they’d given him in the med bay.

“Yes?” Hux snaps, folding his arms tightly.

Ren scowls and pushes his way into the room, followed by that same droid, still carrying the food and the note. Somehow, the thing looks nervous.

“You might have brain damage—you can’t just not eat,” Ren says.

“I’m aware of that, actually, I just don’t need your help to do so.”

Hux sits down at his desk and attempts to ignore Ren, who stands, overlarge and out of place, in the middle of the room. He’s not sure if Ren has ever been in his rooms. If he has it was long ago and he saw it through the slits in that stupid mask.

Hux opens his datapad and pretends to read something. The words still swim on the screen.

“Well, according to the logs you haven’t eaten since before Ustag. The IVs in the med bay don’t really count,” Ren says.

“Do you have nothing better to do than monitor my eating habits? Isn’t there a galaxy you’re supposed to be ruling?”

Hux feels Ren glowering at him but doesn’t look up. The medical droid makes a nervous little noise from near his bed.

“Are you going to eat, or not?” Ren growls.

Hux shrugs, knowing he’s being ridiculous. He’s not sure yet what he wants out of his conversation. Ren throws his hands in the air as thought he’s at a loss, and Hux has a sudden moment of sober clarity—this is ridiculous, what the hell are they doing?

“Are you going to make me force feed you?” Ren says.

Hux looks up at him.

“Is that a pun, Supreme Leader?”

Hux pulls his face into a sneer. It would be so easy to just eat whatever it is the droid is holding. But he and Ren don’t work that way. He’s not sure how else this interaction can go.

Ren looks at him, incredulous, and Hux wants to laugh at his big eyes and lopsided mouth. How is this man, this _boy,_ their Supreme Leader.

“Do you actually have brain damage? What is wrong with you?”

Hux stands up and sways slightly. Ren’s eyes widen and Hux wants to slap him and dropkick that stupid droid.

“I don’t need your help, _Ren._ ”

Ren goes still. Hux can feel him at the edge of his mind. He doesn’t look in, just feels around in Hux’s head, and Hux can’t seem to turn himself off.

“Ah,” Ren says, and a smugness creeps across his face. “I see. You’re embarrassed about requiring assistance on Ustag.”

Hux would hit him if it wouldn’t make him look like a drunken idiot.

“You think you’ve lost the crew’s respect after they saw you carried out of that tunnel like a corpse. Well guess what, General—”

Hux grabs the tray from the droid and lets it clatter onto his desk.

“If I eat your damned food will you stop talking?”

Ren shuts up immediately. The food Hux uncovers tastes like paste and, somehow, the color red. He blinks a few times, suddenly very ready to be sober again.

“It’s cold,” he says after the first bite.

“Well whose fault is that?!” Ren says, inappropriately loud as usual.

Hux can’t help but smirk. Ren sighs in frustration and pulls up a chair.

Hux eats in silence, wishing Ren would look anywhere else. Or, preferably, would get the fuck out of his room. He clearly never learned from whatever backwoods Resistance planet he comes from that it’s rude to stare while someone is eating. Or at any time, ever, really.

“You’re a mess,” Ren says, finally.

“Well. Thank you,” Hux says, unwilling to be sarcastic, but unsure what else to say to that amazing observation.

When Hux is finished he hands the bowl back to the droid, and, crossing his arms, turns back to Ren.

“Happy?”

“Sure,” Ren says, and doesn’t stop looking at him. His face seems to be blank, although it’s equally possible it’s full of some emotion that Hux simply can’t interpret right now.

Ren leans forward on his elbows. Hux wishes he had showered lately, feels more like one of those horned, telepathic creatures on Ustag 07 than himself.

Did Ren come here hoping Hux was a mess, hoping to lord the rescue over him? Was this punishment for that day in the med bay, when Ren thought Hux was taking advantage of his weakness to laugh at him?

“Why did you…” he begins suddenly, taking them both by surprise.

He doesn’t want to say the words _save,_ or _rescue_. Both sounds so dramatic, like he might swoon into Ren’s arms. It’s embarrassing enough to have been carried to safety, though he was half-delirious during the experience.

Ren seems to understand him anyway.

“I’m your Supreme Leader,” Ren says. “And I’ve decided that you’re not allowed to die.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hux wants to laugh at him for being a melodramatic git, but he can’t. He’s too drunk, too tired, too _something_ to do anything other than stare back at him.

“Well, _Supreme Leader,_ thank you for your assistance.” He’s too tired to give this enough bite and it comes out almost sincere. He wants to take it back immediately.

“Do you remember anything after your capture?” Ren says, more carefully than he usually speaks. He looks at the floor. Hux knows he’s talking about the moment before they left together, the moment with Ren’s arms wrapped around him. It strikes Hux suddenly that Ren is so very young. Maybe not in reality, not in body or mind, but whatever tiny heart lives between his ribs must be that of a child.

“Oh, they yelled at us for awhile, but they didn’t understand us and we didn’t understand them so negotiations went nowhere,” he says, joining Ren’s eyes on the floor.

He’s not sure why Ren wants to open that moment up for discussion, but he’s not going to allow it. He’s spent enough time dwelling on the entire humiliating ordeal—he’s ready to be through with it.

Ren wants to say something, he can feel it, so he jumps in first. He should have brought it up a long time ago, he’s already nervous about what Ren might have done in his absence. 

“If you go question the girl, the stormtrooper that was with me, I just ask—please don’t hurt her.” 

Ren’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and that thin scar across his face stretches and distorts. 

Hux sighs, crosses his arms tighter, wonders if its the alcohol in his system that is rendering Ren’s expressions impossible to understand tonight. “I know she broke protocol, failed as my protector, but I’m the one who put her in danger, and she did save my life a few times before we were—”

“I know,” Ren says, and for a moment Hux thinks he’s too late. Ren’s already gotten to her, already hurt her, already thrown her out into space, not even caring about the power that they share.

“Don’t worry, General. I won’t hurt her,” he says with an odd look. Hux suspects that he’s being secretly laughed at for caring.

He looks away again, cursing his current inability to keep eye contact. “Good.”

Silence stretches between them. Hux can feel Ren probing at the edges of his mind. He imagines it must feel blurry, like his thoughts right now. They’re too scattered to pin down, and Ren’s eyes are too much for Hux, he can’t think about anything else.

“You’re drunk,” Ren says.

Hux considers being embarrassed but he can’t summon the energy. He may as well lean into it.

“That I am,” he says. “Would you like to be as well?”

He’s suddenly curious what sort of drunk Ren would be, if he would stumble around, or pontificate, or just continue to brood. Or, indeed, if his bizarre religion has ever even allowed him vices beyond anger. Vices or pleasures. 

Hux swallows. Ren’s not answering him, just staring, and Hux is watching the pulse jump in his neck. He can’t help it—he thinks about Ren’s bare, bleeding chest in the med bay, thinks about his nose in Hux’s hair and his arms wrapped around him. He wonders what kind of sex he’s had before, if it was dark and angry and infused with that magic. He doesn’t mean to picture it, but he does—Ren biting his bottom lip, throwing his head back—

He stands up abruptly and turns away, his chair legs scraping on the floor. Surely Ren just saw everything in his mind, how could he not have? Hux wants to melt into nothing. Wants to dig out another bottle of who-cares-what and disappear. Ren is silent behind him. 

Hux wishes he had a blaster, he’d happily pull the trigger this time. It’s doubtful that simple blaster fire would kill Ren, but at least it would be enough to get him out of here, to get him to stop bringing Hux food and spiriting him away from danger. To get him to stop staring at him like that.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ren says, his voice very quiet. 

Hux isn’t sure if he’s talking about his thoughts of shooting him, or the offer to get him drunk, or whatever sex-related offers he may have interpreted—mistakenly—from Hux’s mind. He can’t bear to turn and look at Ren’s face.

Hux riffles through his cabinet drawers and finds another bottle—Gin this time—simply because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“And why not?” he asks, keeping his voice vague. His heart is pounding, Ren can probably feel it. He unscrews the top and looks at it, wanting to forget everything that is currently happening, but also not wanting the taste of it back in his mouth. Why is he doing this? Why can’t he just shut up?

“I’m needed soon for a meeting with the officers,” Ren says.

Again, it’s impossible to know to which of Hux’s thoughts he’s responding. Since when has Ren been so maddeningly unclear?

Before Hux can decide what to do with the bottle of Gin, it flies out of his hand and smashes against the wall. He freezes. Glass litters the floor. The sharp, nauseating smell of alcohol fills the room.

“You’ll be needed too,” Ren says. Hux hears him stand up. “Get cleaned up.”

Hux doesn’t turn around as Ren goes to the keypad and opens the door. He pauses in the doorway for a moment, like he might say something, and Hux goes numb for a moment with the possibilities. It’s disgust, he’s sure of it. He looks down at the uniform that isn’t his, reeking of alcohol and sweat. He half hopes that Ren will shout at him, will throw him into the nearest wall. But the door shuts, and Ren is gone.

 

**


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I know it's been super long since I updated and I'm sorry! I was super incorrect: summer vacation only meant work, internship, and too many family visits

Kylo dreams of the fight in Snoke’s throne room, except this time he is Rey. He sees himself through her eyes in the aftermath, staring at Snoke’s corpse, holding out his hand for her to join him. He can feel her fear, her indecision. She feels like she’s being crushed under the weight of everything that he has done, everything he’s going to do, and she is powerless to stop him.There’s something else too, something that reaches back through time and grabs at her heart. Regret. Regret that she didn’t try harder.

Even as Kylo’s mind awakens to what is happening, the dream rushes him through time and space, to some unfamiliar corner of the galaxy. Rey sleeps in a room full of heartbeats. There is not enough space on the ship for anyone to be alone. They crowd around her even in sleep. They know they must protect her at all costs.

_Help them._

_Help her._

Kylo wakes up, gasping. 

If not for the metallic smell of the Finalizer and the certainty that he is alone, he’d be sure he was aboard that old trash heap Han Solo called a ship, sure he was surrounded by the last of the resistance.

Rey has deposited many of their remaining members in safer locations—General Organa included—and now flies with the best of their warriors, and with those unwilling to leave her side.

The traitor is there, FN-2187. Rey knows the feel of his mind even when asleep.

Ren sits up, trying to breathe correctly.

If the Force is able to connect them, even in this small, accidental way, it means Rey’s control is slipping. She is exhausted. She’s hidden the entire ship from trained, Force-sensitive hunters for over two galactic weeks. She can not do this indefinitely.

Kylo tries to inspire a new drive within himself—maybe this means he could find them, could bring them to the Order after all. Maybe that would quiet the constant suspicion aboard the Finalizer. It follows him through the corridors, finds him even in his rooms. It’s become a beast, lurking around corners, watching him, waiting for him to slip up. And he has slipped up a few times; when and Officer took a moment too long to follow his orders and ended up thrown against a bulkhead; when he couldn’t wait for the sparring session that night to blow off steam and took his frustration out on a delivery droid. These outbursts only fuel the whispers but he can’t turn himself off, he can’t be Snoke. 

He knows what this newfound Force connection really means: the Knights will find Rey soon. Even now they could be on the Falcon’s tail.

General Organa is no longer on the ship, no longer in danger. Kylo isn’t sure where she’s hiding, Rey had left her on some planet or another, somewhere bright and full of sun.

_Rey left her._

Kylo slides a hand over his face, trying to force away an invented image: Leia Organa standing on some rocky overlook somewhere, watching as one by one her family, friends, loves leave her stranded. 

His fist flies out and strikes the wall behind his bed—focuses on the sting of pain—breathes deeply. He force-lifts himself off the bed and sits in mid-air in the complete and total darkness. He could be anywhere. Maybe he should be anywhere but here. Snoke had rarely been aboard any ship but the Supremacy. Maybe Kylo should also rule from afar.

_Do you want to be like Snoke?_

But it’s not about what he wants, it’s about what might work. And this isn’t working. He is not an ancient, God-like figure, handing down orders that are met with efficiency and brutality. He is lost aboard this ship, all too human to be obeyed the way he should be. Maybe if the crew feared him more, maybe if Hux feared him more…

_Maybe it’s not about fear._

Though the old guard still find him overly ambitious and stuck-up, Hux has gained the respect of the younger officers. Their minds overflow with half-formed plans, each individualized and self-serving, nothing like the cohesive, if uninspired, mutinous efforts sitting at the back of the minds of Datoo’s cohort. Kylo is not sure which is better for the Order in the long run: one large, mundane mutiny, or a dozen, chaotic rebellions that would surely be quashed, but may fracture the Order beyond repair.

Kylo has ignored three com messages from Hux, and one attempted interaction in a corridor when Hux had been flanked by chattering officers. Kylo wishes he still had his mask for such occasions. Hux had flushed brilliantly when they made eye-contact, but the moment he opened his mouth Kylo had looked away, blinking, and glided past him.

They have not spoken since Kylo brought food to Hux’s rooms after he was released from medical. Hux’s drunken projections had been foggy and loud, and one in particular has haunted Kylo since Hux had all but shouted it at him. It wasn’t so much an image as a feeling—hunger, fire, skin on skin.

In the dark, suspended above his bed, Kylo swallows, tries to ignore the thrill of want that wracks his body. He’s not even sure how long it’s been. His hand hovers at his waistband, but he clenches it tight and forces it away. Now, more than ever, he needs to practice self-control. Self-deprivation seemed to be the only lesson that Snoke and Skywalker had in common.

_Maybe that’s where they were wrong._

Not for the first time, he finds that he can’t trust his own interpretation of another person’s projections. How can he be sure it was him that Hux was picturing and not some drunken invention? Even if it was aimed at him, how can he be sure he hadn’t simply planted the idea in Hux’s mind? 

Though still clearly wanting to discuss official business, Hux seems to be avoiding him as well. His projections are confused and nearly impossible to sense behind the solid wall of embarrassment that overtakes him every time he is aware of Kylo’s presence. 

For a moment, Kylo thinks about seeking out Hux’s mind for answers. But Kylo has never before entered Hux’s mind, only felt, blindly, at the peripherals. Snoke had once berated him for this, calling it sentimentality, but Kylo knows better.

Most minds he enters are full of fear, fear for him, but he know all too well that Hux has never been afraid of him, not even when all he saw was the mask. Kylo doesn’t know what else there is, if not fear, and is not sure he wants to find out. Even the brief moments of seeing Hux’s mind through EV were almost too much, would have been overwhelming if not for what had come after.

He feels around the edges of Hux’s mind, floors away, deep in sleep. He wonders what Hux dreams, but does not allow himself to find out.

 

***

 

The knife Hux carries was given to him by Rae Sloane. Even now he doesn’t know if it was a true gift, or another bargaining chip between them, another little spark she added to his fire. He doesn’t really care. He tells himself that the knife is in the spirit of their acquaintanceship—deadly, utilitarian. But it’s also worn, nearly two decades old, and sometimes when he’s drunk and spinning it between his fingers he accepts the deeper reason he keeps it on him at all times, that when its in his hand it feels like her words, her protection have been made physical.

He doesn’t like using it when he can help it, when there are other, more anonymous means of getting what he wants. But sometimes its bite is inevitable. The knife has become adept at finding the brachial artery, of getting the job done quickly and quietly, almost in an instant. 

Hux sits at the head of a conference table and watches a vein pulse in Datoo’s forehead as he breaks down their losses from the desertion of the Retribution and her crew. 

The cold metal of the blade presses against Hux’s arm where he has it hidden up his sleeve, as though it longs to fly up and make a tiny knick in that vein. Datoo might be less annoying with blood pouring down his face. There is something about the man that reminds Hux of his father, or perhaps the version of his father that has survived in his mind all these years: the amalgam of his worst cruelties and self-serving nature, with nothing to stick it together as human.

Datoo is sweating like the desertion of the Retribution was his fault and, though Hux longs for some kind of scapegoat for the situation, he knows that such simplicity is never the case. 

The other officers around the table appear rapt with attention, but Hux knows better. Their minds are elsewhere. They nod but their eyes are glazed over.

For the first time, Hux wishes he had Ren’s abilities. The energy in the room feels fresh, untapped. Ever since returning from the medical bay he’s felt eyes on him at all times, though the looks he is given are not those of pity. Nor are they of interest or respect. They are cautious, on the edge of suspicion, in some cases hopeful. 

Many of the officers are new, recently promoted more out of necessity than merit. Thanisson sits to his left, Borona to his right. She welcomed him back when he arrived at the meeting, all previous iciness gone. She’s not the only one.

“Sir, I want to apologize for any misunderstandings between us on Ustag 07,” Lhun had said to him after catching him in a corridor. Her posture was deferential, almost nervous. 

He had accepted her apology briskly and left her to interpret his sincerity. Now she sits across the table from him, blank-faced as she watches Datoo. When the conversation shifts to the mess of Ustag 07, she stands.

“General, the planet is secure for now, but I’m afraid the entire system is aware of our presence. It wont be long before this incident comes to the attention of the rest of the galaxy,” Lhun says.

“If I may, sir…” Thanisson interjects from his left. “It may not have been strategic to attack Ustag 07 in our current, vulnerable state.”

In another circumstance, Hux would have gone cold and berated him for saying something so bold, but he’s feeling emboldened himself. Despite his lack of magical abilities, he senses that this criticism is not an attack on him.

Hux leans forward, lowers his voice ever-so-slightly, because fuck it, if he can gain back the loyalty of the crew he will. They’ll trust Ren in time. Perhaps Hux can find it in himself to set the example. 

“I apologize personally for what occurred on Ustag 07. The Supreme Leader was determined that the planet should be taken for its Gadolinite, which he believed the Order could use to power weapons at the cutting edge of technology. It is clear now that this acquisition should have come at a later time. In the future I will make sure that the Order does not take on a mission unless we know all of the associated dangers.”

Several officers sit up straighter in barely disguised surprise.

“Sir—” one of them says after a few moments of silence and exchanged glances— “meaning no disrespect, but how strong is your influence over the Supreme Leader?”

Hux bristles slightly at this, but the question seems sincere, almost concerned, though admittedly this attitude is hardly better than causticity. 

“To be frank, Lord Ren is not always open to my suggestions. But I think after our years of co-commandership we’ve developed a certain rapport that can be relied on.”

“So he’ll maybe listen to you, if you really want him to?” says Thanisson. “That hardly seems—” he is cut off with a sharp look from Borona.

Hux remains silent, eyebrows raised.

“I just mean, sir, that it seems to us at times on the bridge that the Supreme Leader Ren may share some of Leader Snoke’s same…opaqueness. Their decision-making seems to be grounded more in magic than in the realities of galactic politics.”

Hux can do this, he can bridge the gap between Ren and the officers, even if he has to lie through his teeth.

“I think we’ve all learned from the Order’s experience on Ustag 07,” he says, “Lord Ren included. He has assured me he will make efforts at transparency in the future. How are the mines we’ve set up on the planet?”

He makes it clear with a look that the subject is closed. Thanisson spends the rest of the meeting watching him silently.

 

***

 

“Again,” Kylo says, when the plastic sparring staff flies out of EV-9052’s hands. She stoops to pick it up. “No!” he holds up a hand. “With the force.”

It’s their seventh session in as many days. Her command of force-lifting is tenuous at best, and he senses her fear during their sparring lessons, but she’s developing a connection to the force that deepens each day. Kylo can feel her awareness of it growing, and along with it, her trust in him. She hardly flinches now when he yells, she holds his gaze without looking away, she no longer shudders each time the heavy doors into the audience chamber close behind her.

She still derives no pleasure from fighting, however, and he’s not sure what else he can do to inspire the same violence that drives him.

_The same violence that eats you alive._

The thought has Skywalker’s voice. Kylo shakes his head to dislodge it.

“Focus,” he says, and EV closes her eyes for a moment and breathes deeply. 

She wears the loose, black garments that all troopers wear on their off-hours and under their armor. In the darkness of the audience chamber it almost looks like her head and hands hover in the air, disconnected from a body. He knows that in his own dark clothing he must look similar.

The staff vibrates on the ground, then shoots up into her hand.

“Good,” Kylo says, and gives her only enough time to open her eyes and grip the staff tightly before rushing at her. She parries the blow with a gasp.

“Footwork,” he says, and she corrects her stance. 

He’s never taught anyone anything before, isn’t sure if anything he’s doing is correct, or if he can sustain this level of patience for much longer. He can sense her power, bubbling just below the surface of her mind. It seems almost willful of her not to use it.

He lands a particularly sharp blow to her wrist and she cries out in pain.

“I’m sorry, Lord Ren, I—” she breaths hard, holding the staff loose in her hand and rubbing her wrist.

“Don’t call me that!” Kylo shouts as he rushes at her again. 

With a broken off cry, she swing the staff up just in time, though not hard enough to entirely stop the blow from landing on her shoulder.

“But you’re my superior officer,” she says, gasping for breath.

“I don’t care,” he says.

She’s exhausted. Stormtrooper training is thorough, but this is a world apart from that collective anonymity. Here she is a single person, her own person, and after seven days of this, Ren feels her teetering at the very end of her rationality. But he feels something just beyond, and the more she breaks, the more it shines through.

Her breath comes in choked sobs. Her hair is matted to sweat on her forehead.

“I can’t,” she says, “I’ve failed, I’m sorry—”

“Stop!” Ren lands another blow, just barely blocked, and feels her fear spike. “Stop apologizing! Be here, right now. There is no one else in the galaxy. Just you and me.”

But all she can feel right now is how small she is.

“In this room, I’m nothing,” he says. “I’m just your opponent. Your equal. We’re not on this ship, we’re not who they think we are.”

Kylo barely knows what he’s saying, he’s just following the path of her fear, sensing that somehow, this is what she’s truly scared of. Not the pain, not the fight, not his body, but his title and her own insignificance.

“You are more than this,” he says and suddenly he’s back in Snoke’s throne room with Rey. _You’re nothing._

“You are everything,” he growls, and knows this voice scares her but feels a spark hidden beneath that fear. There’s a larger battle happening rapid-fire in her mind, part of her blocking his words like she blocks his sparring staff—another part of her seizing them, feeling them in her veins.

Another blow, just barely blocked.

“Power is yours, the _galaxy_ is yours—” Another blow— “just reach out and take it—” her every breath is labored. 

Something swells within her but she stumbles, lowers the staff just as he levels a blow fully against her arm.

He feels it before he can understand what happened. His staff shatters, shards of plastic flying in every direction. The blow reverberates up his arm, throws his shoulder out of its socket. He staggers backward, clutching his arm, holding the sharp pain away with the Force. It’s as though he rammed his full strength into a granite wall, and the wall pushed back.

EV stands in front of him, wide-eyed with confusion, staff held loose at her side. Her skin is _glowing_. He’s not sure if he can see it because the room is dark or because of his own command of the Force, but he sees tendrils of power running beneath her skin, lighting up the point of impact on her arm. She follows his gaze and stares in shock, touches it tenderly, as though expecting blood or bruises, but the skin is untouched, unbroken.

Kylo has on occasion protected himself with the Force—he pushed back against Hux’s blade when it had been up against his abdomen—but it was nothing like this. For Kylo it required concentration, aggression, a point of origin. This is like armor, like the Force has woven itself into her skin.

“Lord Ren,” she says, hand covering her mouth as she spots his injured arm, “I’m so sorry—”

“Stop,” he says, shaking his head. He sits down in front of her and closes his eyes. He hears her drop the staff and hurry to copy him, still breathing heavily. Her projections are confused about what just happened, worried that she’s hurt him, though at the same time there’s a thrill in her stomach that she was somehow able to do so.

He holds his arm, concentrates, feels the correct alignment with the Force, then shoves his shoulder back in place with a grunt of pain.

He lets silence settle around them and slowly opens his eyes. The glow on her skin is fading, though now that he knows what it feels like in the force, he can’t stop feeling it.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”

Her eyes roam over his arm.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” he says, which is not quite true, but he doesn’t want to admit his level of pain. He braces himself to fend off another apology, and is relieved when it doesn’t come.

“What just happened?” she says, voice more curious than nervous.

Kylo takes a moment to gather his thoughts. He remembers asking the same question of Leia Organa many years ago, not understanding the power that had just burst forth, an apparent manifestation of his anger.

“There are different ways a Force-user’s abilities can manifest,” he tells EV. He does not remember what Organa had told him then. Soon after he was shipped off to Luke. “I’ve been explaining the Force to you in the way that I understand it, but now I’m questioning if that was the right choice. My power is aggressive, made for battle, but yours seems to be defensive, internal, designed to help and protect you.”

_Weak,_ she thinks, feeling a stab of failure. Like all stormtroopers, she’s been taught from childhood to appreciate only the physical, the violent. 

“I used to think so about defensive power,” Kylo says as if she’d said this word aloud. “But you connected our minds across a tremendous distance, and hid yourself in the Force without even trying, and dislocated my shoulder by just standing there, so I know now that it’s not.”

He feels more than sees her face flush in the darkness.

“But I don’t know how I did any of that,” she says. “It all just happened.” 

“That’s always how it starts. You’ve already started identifying your connection with the Force and strengthening it. Even if you didn’t consciously think about forming a protective shield around yourself, you reached out with the Force when you were afraid of getting hurt, and it responded automatically. Even subconsciously you couldn’t have done that two weeks ago. The more you acknowledge your connection, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.”

She looks down at the inky black of empty space below them.

“I think I feel it,” she says quietly after a moment. “I mean, I always felt it, but it feels different now. It feels like it’s woken up.”

Kylo nods, thinking over what just happened and what it might mean for their training. He’s not sure if the sparring is worth their time anymore—at least not until EV has developed this new skill.

“You need to practice,” he says. “You might be able now to use this shield in moments of high stress, but I think it’s possible to use it consciously, whenever you decide to.”

“How?”

He points at her arm, at the point of impact of his staff.

“Concentrate on where the shield formed first. Through the Force, you felt precisely where I was going to hit you and your body responded. Try to take yourself back to that moment, feel what you felt then. Concentrate.”

They sit cross-legged for the next few hours, EV concentrating intently on forming the barrier around her body, Kylo watching the slight glow of the power rippling against her skin.

It is later than usual when Kylo ends their session, but he holds up a hand before EV can stand up.

“Before you go, will you do something for me?” he asks. He knows it’s a risk—he’s given EV only bare details about his own life—but last night’s dream has been hovering at the edge of his mind all day.

EV looks nervous for a moment, but blinks and nods her head.

Kylo wonders how to phrase his question.

“Somewhere out in the galaxy is a girl—a woman—very powerful in the Force. Right now she is scared and angry and tired. She is hiding herself with the Force but her control over it is slipping. I want you to reach out and see if you can see her.”

EV just stares at him, wide-eyed. 

“Why?” she asks. It’s the first time she’s questioned something he’s told her. He takes a breath, trying not to be irritated, and checks her projections. She is suspicious of his motives. She senses his hesitance surrounding this request and has interpreted it as unethical in some way.

“Because she’s in danger.” He keeps his voice calm, but something of the truth slips through and she regards him, eyebrows drawn slightly together in curiosity.

“This girl,” she says, “is she more like you, or me?”

He knows what she means—she’s taken his explanation of Force abilities and turned it dichotomous, either outward or inward power, though of course the truth is infinitely more complex.

“She’s more like me than she wants to be,” he says. “We’re two sides of the same coin.”

EV’s projections tell him she doesn’t know what this means. He’s not sure he does either, but after he says it he knows that it’s true.

_Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s you who is more like her than you want to be, than Snoke wanted you to be—_

EV blinks, startled as though she heard Snoke’s name spoken aloud in the room. 

“Is he—?”

“No,” Kylo says, “Snoke is gone.”

For a moment he isn’t sure if she’s relieved or disappointed at this reassurance that Snoke is gone, and Kylo realizes that he has no idea how the average stormtrooper felt about their mysterious commander. But EV’s projections tell him that she was terrified of Snoke, that she’d always thought that if she got too close to him he’d be able to feel her abilities. She was never entirely sure why, but this thought had always filled her with dread. Kylo knew—she must have sensed her fate if Snoke had ever found out about her. If he deemed her powerful enough he’d have brought her on as another apprentice. If not, Kylo would have been ordered to dispose of her. Even those Force-sensitive individuals that Snoke thought were weak were still too dangerous to allow to live.

“Who is this woman?” EV says, snapping Kylo out of his reverie.

“Her—identity is unimportant to the lesson,” he says. “For now, just concentrate on finding her.”

She nods and closes her eyes, copying the posture that Kylo uses when meditating. They’ve practiced mediation every day—it comes easy to her, much easier than it had for him when Luke had tried to teach him. He tries not to be jealous.

Her eyebrows raise and her lips tighten as she concentrates. Kylo can feel her stretching out her mind, though he stays away from it while she does so. Her mind feels elastic, like she can reach anywhere in the galaxy if she really wants to. It is far more malleable than his own, or even Rey’s. The both of them are far too stubborn to be able to open their minds enough to see as far as they’d like to. Or maybe it’s just him. 

He meditates as well while waiting, forcing his mind to quiet, though bits of thought and others consciousnesses ping off of him like debris off the ship’s shields. One of them is Hux, though Kylo can’t be sure if this is Hux’s mind needling at him, or his own thoughts about the man. He wonders for a moment if Hux has com-ed him again before stamping out all thought and quieting his mind. 

Floating there, in the emptiness of space, he loses all sense of time.

His mind wakes only when EV gasps. He opens his eyes, returning to himself in a rush and sees her blinking, wide-eyed at the floor.

“Did you see her?” he asks, too eagerly. 

It takes her a moment to respond.

“I just saw a flicker of her. But the moment I did—she must have felt me because she shut me out immediately.” She looks up at Kylo. “I felt her fear, and the fear of the others she’s with. Something is hunting them, and it’s catching up.”

 

***

 

Ren hasn’t been answering his data pad or his door, and Hux is sure that it’s because of the image that Ren saw in Hux’s mind. Hux can’t even think about it without going red, without wanting to erase the entire encounter—and possibly Ren—from his mind.

He can’t seem to be in his rooms lately without a glass in hand. He doesn’t care much about what’s in it, as long as it can calm his mind and the constant clench of his chest. It feels like his lungs are in a vice. 

Hux doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. There are times he can’t breathe, can’t think, feels like the ship is imploding around him. He’s nearly gotten what he always wanted—total control of the First Order. More power than anyone in the galaxy. So why can’t his body catch up with his ambition? He mostly blame Ren (it’s his fault he only _nearly_ has what he wants, after all), but he knows it’s not really his fault, not entirely.

And Ren has gotten worse. Not only will he not speak to Hux or anyone else it seems, he’s returned to his old habit of talking to himself while pacing the corridors. All anyone seems to be able to relay to Hux is that he’s apparently fixated on a girl. At first, Hux hopes it is the scavenger girl. Perhaps Ren has found her at last. Crushing the last of the resistance would surely shift the galaxy’s focus away from the utter disaster that is their occupation of Ustag 07.

But after an early-cycle call with the officers aboard the Triumph (on Ren’s behalf. Ren has about a dozen of in-person meeting requests that have gone unacknowledged) he overhears Thanisson and another young officer, Harkor, Hux thinks her name is, gossiping as they leave the conference room. 

“—the General will take care of it,” Harkor says in an undertone. “No need to worry—”

“But it’s ridiculous that he has to,” Thanisson says, much more loudly. Hux wants to roll his eyes at Thanisson’s obvious attempt at getting his attention, but Thanisson continues before Hux can get out of hearing range. “You’ve heard the rumors, I know you have. Instead of calling on the rest of his ships, instead of ruling his galaxy, the Supreme Leader is carrying out some affair with a female stormtrooper. It’s utterly embarrassing.”

Hux stops dead in the middle of the corridor, shock and inexplicable rage swelling up in a flash, before being doused when he realizes he’s just given Thanisson exactly what he wanted. He feels Thanisson’s eyes on his back, knows there is no way he can save this moment from looking like exactly what it is, so he continues on quickly, leaving the pair of them to continue their gossip behind him.

In his rooms he pours himself a glass and gets to work, determined not to think about what he’s just heard.

Just about every branch of the trade federation is requesting meetings with and explanations from Ren. They’ll just have to be content with Hux instead. And a holo-call. And a total lack of explanation. There’s only one girl Thanisson could possibly be referring to. The girl Hux had explicitly told him to stay away from. Or had he? Perhaps he had just told him not to hurt her. Regardless, the Supreme Leader should have more sense than to have a relationship with an inferior officer. At least not one that is so easily gossiped about. 

Hux finished his drink and poured another. He drains that too, and sets down his data pad. On a whim, he pulls out Rae’s knife and spins it between his fingers, loving the cold metal and the sharp sting when he slips. 

Without meaning to, his mind puts together images of the two of them, Ren and the girl. Naked together, their magic fucking powers combining or something. What was it like when two force users had sex? The girl had seemed so timid, likely to be too scared of Ren to even speak to him, let alone fuck him.

He wouldn’t force her, would he? 

No. 

Would he?

Hux had told him not to hurt her.

The knife slips from his fingers and lands, point down, barely an inch from his foot. A drop of red lands next to it and he realizes that he’s nicked every one of his fingers and they’re bleeding freely. Gravity shifts slightly as he bends to pick up the knife.

It’s a beautiful thing really. Ornate. Lovely. Deadly. It exists as a perfect whole. It needs nothing but itself.

Without warning he throws it at the wall and it strikes the seam between the metal plating and hangs there, quivering.

For the first time in a long time he wishes he had…something. He can’t even name what, and he can’t bring himself to examine this longing in the slightest.

He pours another glass and pushes it out of his mind. It’s easy when he’s drinking like this, when things fall out of his mind like water.

He sits at his desk and does busy work, calculates expenses as his fingers bleed and his head spins.

 

***

 

Kylo has found it is easier to reach out with the force when he is a few feet off the ground. Despite the ship’s artificial gravity and the coolness of his room, it almost feels like a deprivation tank, like a tank of Bacta.

Finding Rey isn’t enough. If he finds her now he’ll only be adding his own impression in the Force to everything she is trying to hide. He’s not going to forgive her for leaving, but he knows she doesn’t deserve what the Knights have in store for her.

_Tell the truth._

He’s not sure how long he’s been in this room, trying to find his way around this problem, and the longer he’s in here the more projections he has to block out from the rest of the ship. He’s missed his meeting with Evie at least twice, and her worry is slowly turning to panic. Hux won’t stop comm-ing him and coming to his door, is even slightly worried that Kylo has died in here, though Kylo isn’t sure why because surely his death would solve many of Hux’s problems. 

The memory of his drunken projections are still stuck in Hux’s mind, just below the surface of everything he does, like a constant whisper that Kylo is sure Hux isn’t even consciously aware of. He can’t stand their noise. He just wants to be left alone with this impossible puzzle.

The fear he’d inspired in the crew during the Ustag 07 raid has decayed—only Datoo seems to have held onto it. Kylo is not Snoke, he can’t just disappear for days and maintain Snoke’s level of mysterious authority. Maybe there’s no way he ever could be like Snoke—cold, calculating, political. Kylo is a brute force weapon, always has been. 

_Maybe that’s why he kept you so close._

Kylo tries to calm his mind, rid himself of these thoughts and focus on the problem at hand, but he’s spiraling and he knows it. There is no easy answer to this.

Sakue had been the calculating one, the one most in Snoke’s image, the one Snoke kept the furthest distance from. Kylo had always sensed this was done to rid her of her arrogance, but now he wonders if that was the whole truth. They’d all been arrogant in their own ways, but Sakue was the most ambitious. Kylo knows almost nothing about her. She was already being trained by Snoke when Kylo joined them, and all he’d sensed from her was an intense hatred at having to share.

Carsam had been next, found by Snoke somewhere in the Outer Rim, barely able to speak Galactic Basic. The only time Kylo had ever seen Snoke cede to anything was when Carsam had flatly refused to wear a mask, something about his planet’s religious beliefs. Kylo had smirked when he’d said it, fully prepared to be ordered to kill him on the spot. Instead Snoke allowed him to wear a heavy hood that all but obscured his white-blond hair and heavy jaw.

Alnor and Mebba came next, not brothers as far as Kylo knew, but inseparable as though they were, both tall—taller even than Kylo—and skeletally thin, more skilled in manipulation than in combat.

A few short months before Snoke had taken Kylo to the First Order, Eri joined the Knights. Despite the fact that Snoke himself was not fully human he had little patience for non-humans, often ordered the Knights to train using members of alien species as targets. Eri was a Chagrian, and her blue skin turned mottled purple each time Snoke berated her for her perceived ignorance and inelegance. Kylo used to wonder if Snoke only brought her to them in order to have something to step on, over and over again.

Of all the Knight, Eri is the only one Kylo is sure has not lost any sleep over Snoke’s demise.

Perhaps if he reaches out to her first—?

His data pad dings from the floor and he can’t help but glance down.

_General Armitage Hux_ blinks at him in red, followed by the words _Need to speak._

Kylo shuts his eyes, wishing that he could just turn Hux off, just for a day. While Hux’s obsessive, neurotic mind is in range, Kylo can have no peace. 

_Armitage._

He’s always known this was Hux’s first name, had read it in some file somewhere, had heard it come out of Hux’s mouth when they shook hands that first day in the hangar, when Hux had taken in his mask, hood, ragged cape and looked down his nose at him. He can’t remember Hux ever calling him anything but _Ren._ He’s never called Hux _Armitage_ , but he’s often wondered about it, who had chosen it, if it’s a family name, if they’d called him something else as a child.

He used to say it aloud when he was alone, try out the feel of it in his mouth, though he's never planned on saying it to the man himself.

_Stop_.

He can’t be thinking about Hux, not now. He has things to do.

The data pad dings again. Kylo growls at it.

_Answer your fucking comm,_ the message glows up at him.

It dings again, many times in quick succession.

_You can’t keep doing this._

_Don’t understand you._

_Why du even wanted to be SL?_

_*Did you._

_*Want._

_Answer me._

_Ren._

Then there are a series of empty messages that he knows Hux only sent so Kylo would have to live through the noise.

Hux is drunk. Even without the messages, Kylo can sense it from across the ship. He tries not to think about the frequency of this occurrence. It seems to go in cycles. It’s been bad before and gotten better. Hux will get better. He’ll be fine.

_You always tell yourself that_.

His feet hit something solid—he’s lost focus, accidentally dropped out the air, landed cross-legged on the floor. The data pad dings again and he sends it flying across the room, shattering against the metal wall.

He doesn’t know what to do with Hux’s sudden insistence on speaking with him, doesn’t know what to do about Hux’s drinking—there’s nothing he can do about Hux’s drinking, not without getting more involved, not without giving himself away. 

His mind flashes again to that drunken projection, just an impression of skin on skin, of two people—Hux? Himself?

It had been barely a moment at the time but now he can’t keep his mind from letting it play out and the fantasy unspools, out of his control. 

His hands are all over Hux’s body, all the places that are always wrapped up in the black uniform that’s now been stripped away. Hux’s hair is tangled and so very red, and he moans, head thrown back, looking at Kylo through his eyelashes as Kylo pants and sweats on top of him. For the first time since it happened, Kylo thinks about the moment Hux had woken up in the cave on Ustag 07, when he’d looked up at him and said _“Fucking hell, it’s you,”_ breathless, their bodies closer than ever. Kylo imagines he would say other things in that same voice, that he would beg, or take control, or tell Kylo to fuck him harder, faster, or order Kylo not to kiss him—

On the other side of the ship, Hux falls asleep at his desk.

Kylo’s hands curl into fists in his hair, pull it to keep himself from invading Hux’s dreams.

Snoke had been right. Hux will be his downfall.

He lifts himself into the air again, determined now that Hux’s mind has quieted.

He closes his eyes tight, trying to erase everything around him. He’s never been particularly good at it, but the Knights are gaining on Rey; he has been successful enough in his mental pursuit to feel this.

_Tell the truth._

There is only one way out of this for Rey. He’s known it the whole time. Maybe it’s the thoughts of Hux that spur him towards it, that make him reckless. Hux makes him care about nothing and everything simultaneously.

He reaches out and finds that it’s easier than expected, like mending an old circuit. They’re aware of his presence instantly, though only Sakue speaks to him. 

_Kylo Ren,_ she says in place of a greeting. They’re curious, unsure what to make of this. They’ve each had their suspicions, he can feel it, Alnor in particular, but Sakue doesn’t think he is powerful enough, brave enough to have defeated Snoke, and she has convinced the others of the same. He grits his teeth at this diminishing of his power, hopes she can feel his anger burning across the galaxy. If she were here he would choke the life out of her, cut her in half. He tries to clear his head. It doesn’t matter—she’ll be here soon.

_Sakue Ren,_ he replies. _You are wasting your energy. The girl is nothing, has done nothing. I killed Snoke. I betrayed him. Stabbed him in the back. I do not fear you. There is nothing you can do to hurt me._

Kylo can feel the weight of their fury. It emanates off each of them and swells, grows, turns its eye where their ship hovers uselessly over Ustag 07.

He can feel Sakue above the rest, always quicker, sharper, more deadly.

_We shall see._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I will be updating the tags as I write, and as I figure out what this is turning into...lol
> 
> The title is a line from one of my favorite songs ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


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